


the change in us

by LittlePlumTree



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-03
Updated: 2014-08-03
Packaged: 2018-02-11 14:14:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2071395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittlePlumTree/pseuds/LittlePlumTree
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I’ve found your BFF,” Stark says without preamble.</p><p>“My… what?” </p><p>“James Barnes. Winter Soldier. Bucky. I don’t know, I don’t care, but right now he’s perched on the roof of the next building with a gun on me, and it’s not so much my idea of a relaxing afternoon, so could you get down here?”</p><p>Steve hangs up and starts running.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the change in us

Steve gets the call one afternoon while he’s out running. His cellphone goes off in his pocket, and he pulls it out to see ‘Tony Stark’ on the caller ID. He debates not answering.

“Hello?”

“I’ve found your BFF,” Stark says without preamble.

“My… what?” Steve asks, face scrunching up in confusion, and he hears Stark sigh.

“James Barnes. Winter Soldier. Bucky. I don’t know, I don’t care, but right now he’s perched on the roof of the next building with a gun on me, and it’s not so much my idea of a relaxing afternoon, so could you get down here?”

Steve hangs up and starts running.

Ten minutes later he skids to a halt in the foyer of the Stark Tower and jabs the lift button for the main floor. His stomach is doing flips and his hands are shaking. Right after the fall of SHIELD, he and Sam had scoured the city, digging up bases and taking out HYDRA agents, and Natasha had called in favours left, right and centre in places Steve had never heard of, but they’d come up with nothing. That was three months ago. Wherever HYDRA kept the Soldier, they’d hidden it well. 

When the elevator doors open on the main floor of the Tower, the scene that greets him would be pretty funny if Steve was in the mood to laugh. Standing in the doorway of the lift he sees Stark sitting behind the bar, which is acting as a barrier between him and the windows, head leant back against the cupboards as he taps nonchalantly away at his phone. He glances up and then looks Steve up and down, taking in sweatpants and trainers and says, “Did you run here?”

Steve ignores him and steps into the room, and then stops as Tony flails his arms. “Wouldn’t do that.” He gestures upwards at the wall opposite his hiding place and Steve follows his arm up to see a red dot trained on a cupboard. He takes a deep breath and then a tentative step forward. The dot doesn’t move, and he takes another. 

Squinting across the room and through the floor to ceiling windows on the other side he can see a dark figure lying on the roof of the building on the opposite side of the street, clearly holding a rifle. Tony is looking at Steve from behind the bar as if he’s insane, and Steve frowns.

“If he was going to shoot me, he’d have done it.”

Tony slowly stands, head and shoulders popping comically up over the top of the bar, and immediately the red dot moves off the wall to sit right over his heart. He sees Steve’s expression of concern, follows his gaze down to his own chest, and then throws himself back onto the floor. 

“I don’t think he likes you,” Steve says, and Tony just glares. 

Steve cautiously moves towards the window, noting that the red dot stays trained on the wall and thankfully not on him. Clearly the Winter Soldier wants nothing to do with Tony, or perhaps, anyone that isn’t Steve. He reaches the glass and peers through, across the gap between buildings at the sniper on the roof. As he watches, the Soldier stands, visibly holds out both his hands in a clear surrender, and then places his gun on the roof next to his feet. Relief blooms in the pit of Steve’s stomach. The Winter Soldier doesn’t surrender. A small part of him is starting to believe, needs to believe, that the man on the roof is more Bucky than anything else. He stares through the glass and the Soldier stays with his hands in the air, waiting for Steve to make his move.

Steve, without breaking eye contact with the Soldier calls back to Tony, “He’s surrendered.” Hearing a shuffle that means Tony’s getting up, Steve says hastily over his shoulder, “Don’t get up. Can you maybe stay there a couple more minutes? You seem to put him on edge.”

“On edge? I put him on edge? He’s the one with the gun, Cap, I’m just a simple man trying to make a sandwich.” Steve doubts Stark has ever made a sandwich in his life, but he doesn’t say so.

“Just, stay there, don’t come out until I tell you to, alright? I’m going over there.”

“What!” Stark squawks. “Are you insane? Do you actually want to die?”

“He’s surrendered. Maybe he just wants to talk.”

“Fine, go die, don’t say I didn’t warn you,” Tony snarks, and Steve raises his own hands, making sure the Soldier can see them through the window. He motions for the Soldier to stay where he is and does some complicated hand gesture that he means to convey he’s coming over there, and Stark, even though he can’t see what Steve is doing from behind the bar, snaps, “What are you doing, charades?”

“No,” Steve replies defensively.

He begins to walk backwards toward the lift, and he sees the Soldier lower his hands but he stays where he is. 

“Stay there,” Steve says to Tony, and Tony makes a huffing noise and goes back to his phone. 

Steve disappears out into lift, and then stops the doors just as they’re closing. “Why didn’t you just call the suit?” he asks Tony, and Tony looks embarrassed.

He flaps his hand and Steve catches, “Upgrades… JARVIS… If I disconnect it now, I’ll have to start over.”

Steve just looks at him, squints like he’s going to ask how Tony figures an upgrade of the suit takes priority over his own safety, and then doesn’t bother.

When he gets out on the street again, he looks up. No sign of the Soldier, but he didn’t expect him to be leaning over the side of the building and waving. The building the Soldier on is an office building, so Steve impatiently presses the button for the elevator and then hits the button for the top floor. The elevator takes ages, and as he stands in the small metal box with quiet elevator music playing he wonders what in the world he’s actually going to say. 

The doors open on a deserted corporate-looking hallway, and Steve slips out of the lift and heads down the corridor to a door helpfully marked ‘Roof’. He pushes it open and steps through to see the Soldier standing near the edge of the roof turn to look at him. 

“Hi,” Steve says awkwardly. The Soldier raises his hands again. Steve raises his back.

“I’m unarmed,” Steve assures him, and the Soldier replies,

“I know.” 

Steve’s heart does a backflip, because that’s Bucky’s voice, the same Brooklyn accent and the same face looking right at Steve, now without a mask, and Steve doesn’t know what to do. 

“Why did you come here?” he begins, figuring it’s as good a place to start as any.

The Soldier doesn’t break eye contact, but his voice sounds broken as he replies. “I didn’t know where else to go.”

“Did HYDRA send you?”

“No.”

“Is anyone looking for you?”

“No.” 

“Will you let me help you?” 

“Yes.”

“Do you trust me?”

There’s a pause this time, and then, “Yes.”

Steve feels a warm rush of relief course through him, and he lets himself believe for a minute that Bucky’s in there. He’s talking to the Soldier, but perhaps he’s reaching out to Bucky.

“Will you let me take you somewhere safe?”

The Soldier’s eyes widen almost imperceptibly, and Steve takes a step forward as if to offer comfort or explanation, and the Soldier steps back. Steve takes a deep breath, composing himself. “The people, they’re friends. They won’t hurt you, I promise. If you trust me, trust them.”

The Soldier looks unconvinced, but Steve doesn’t say anything more, and the Soldier eventually stoops to pick up his rifle, and then looks to Steve to lead the way. 

As they walk back along the hallway to the elevator, Steve wonders how the Soldier got up there in the first place. He’s still dressed entirely in black, hair long and eyes rimmed with dark smudges of paint. His boots make heavy clunks on the hallway floor, and the gun is held obviously in his metal arm. He’s a fearsome sight. Steve hopes to God they don’t run into anyone, but they make it to the lift without incident. The Soldier looks wary of being in such an enclosed space with someone he knows could match him in a fight, and Steve gives him a smile. “You’re holding the gun, pal.”

The Soldier hefts the weapon, and nods. 

They cross the street to the Tower, and a few cabs slow down, a car horn toots, but Steve walks ahead and a glance over his shoulder tells him the Soldier is following. Steve debates for a minute where to take him, and then pulls out his cellphone and calls Tony. 

“You got him?” Stark answers without preamble.

“Yeah. Where’s best to take him?” 

“Banner’s lab,” Tony replies. “I’ve put Jarvis on mute, thought that might be a bit much for your buddy to take in.”

“Thanks, Stark,” Steve says, and ends the call. Motioning for the Soldier to get into the elevator, Steve steps in behind him and presses the button for the floor with Bruce’s lab. The doors open to reveal Tony and Bruce already there. 

The Soldier is immediately on the defensive, shifting the gun to his other arm and flexing his metal fingers. Steve quickly motions for the other two to put their hands up, and they do, Tony saying, “Despite the little red dot you had on me, no hard feelings. No guns.” Steve notices, however, the briefcase containing the Ironman suit sitting on a table.

The Soldier looks at Steve who nods towards the lab. “Go ahead. You’re safe.” The Soldier steps into the room, loosening the grip on his gun, and looks around. Banner’s various machines and screens and pages of notes are scattered around on tables, and Banner himself steps quietly towards the Soldier and holds out his hand.

“I’m Doctor Bruce Banner. I want to help you.”

The Soldier looks at the hand and tentatively takes it, shaking it once before dropping it. Bruce smiles and then suddenly the Soldier goes tense, his eyes go wide and his legs seem to give way. He falls to his knees, face scrunched up in pain, dropping the gun and metal arm going stiff and inhuman, fingers splayed and rigid. 

“Back, get back,” Banner orders, and Steve and Tony both shift to the middle of the room away from the Soldier.

“What is it, what’s happening?” Steve says urgently, and Bruce just shakes his head.

“I don’t know, but he’s in a lot of pain. This all has the potential to go very wrong.”

“Wrong how?” Stark says, but it’s already obvious. 

The Soldier’s face relaxes but his eyes stay wild, and he stands shakily up, bends to snatch the gun from where he’d dropped it, and immediately drops into a defensive crouch, one hand wrapped around the gun, the other on the floor in front of him, knees bent, eyes looking angrily up at the three men.

“Soldier, I need you to calm down,” Banner tries, but the Soldier clearly isn’t that easily pacified. His eyes flick wildly around the lab until they land on Steve, and then he straightens and begins to walk towards him, right past Bruce, ignoring Tony, saying, “какова моя миссия?” Steve puts his hands up, begins to walk backwards in an attempt to get away from the approaching Soldier who’s coming at him with such desperation in his eyes, and when he doesn’t reply, the Soldier says again, “какова моя миссия?”

Somewhere behind the Soldier Steve hears the Iromnan suit booting up, and Steve can only shake his head, not understanding and having no weapon, no shield, and then again, louder the Soldier says, “какова моя миссия? какова моя миссия? какова моя миссия!?” until he’s almost screaming, and Steve has nowhere left to go, his back is against the wall and the Soldier’s metal arm is at his throat and he’s choking, and the Soldier’s eyes are scared and the voice that should be Bucky’s is still asking him over and over, “какова моя миссия?” and then there’s a needle pushing its way into the Soldier’s neck, and he slumps to the floor to reveal Bruce behind him.

“Sedative,” Banner says quietly, and Steve gasps for air.

“Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.”

Tony steps out of the suit and powers it down, looking a little disappointed he didn’t get to use it, and they get the Soldier into a chair and strap him in. Banner assures them the restraints can hold even the hulk, and Steve doesn’t ask him how he knows that.

“What happened?” he asks when they’re sure the Soldier isn’t going anywhere, and Bruce shakes his head.

“It looked to me like some kind of seizure, but I can’t be sure. I need to do scans, take blood. It could be withdrawal of some kind, who knows what they’ve got pumping through his veins to keep him loyal.”

The idea makes Steve feel sick to his stomach, and his hands curl into fists and he turns away.

“What was he saying?” he asks Bruce without turning around.

Quietly, Bruce replies, “‘What is my mission?’”

Steve feels like he has to sit down.

“Cap,” Tony says, and Steve just shakes his head and turns back to face them.

“I’m fine. What do we need to do?”

“Should we call the others in?” Tony asks, and Steve is about to shake his head when he realizes Natasha could know a lot more about this than any of them.

“Widow,” he says. “And if we’re calling her, might as well call Barton.”

“Do we have to put up with them being sickeningly in love?”

“They act no different to before,” Banner sighs. “Must you always play the Grinch?”

Tony rolls his eyes. “Young love. Gross.”

“Does SHIELD need to know?” Banner asks, ploughing on with the matter at hand, and Tony snorts.

“What, that their two best spies are banging?” Bruce ignores that comment, waits and Tony goes on. “Anyway, what SHIELD? There’s nobody left.”

“Coulson-,” Steve interjects, but Tony is shaking his head. 

“I don’t think he’d give us anything we can’t get on our own. By all means, it’s your call, Cap. Your man, your team. I just think leaving SHIELD out of the loop on this one might a wise move.”

Steve nods reluctantly. Since the fall of SHIELD, at the hands of Hydra and the very man slumped in the chair in front of them, very few people know the organization still even exists. Very few know Fury’s still even alive, and as of the day they fell, Fury’s in the wind, and Coulson is rebuilding SHIELD from the ground up. While they’re pretty confident Hydra fell with them, Steve can see why it would be safest to keep this one off the books. For now, anyway.

Bruce is tentatively sliding a needle into the Soldier’s arm, and Steve watches as the syringe fills with the red of the Soldier’s blood. Tony pulls out his phone, dials a number, and on the other end of the phone says, “Hello?” and Tony replies, 

“Hey, Pepper.”

Steve pulls out his own phone and types a quick text. Winter Soldier restrained and unconscious in Banner’s lab. Your help would be appreciated. He sends it to Clint and Natasha, and then sends another. Only if you’re not busy. Then a couple of seconds later, he sends, Thanks.

He gets a reply from Clint almost right away. Hawk is in flight.

Natasha replies, On my way.

Steve puts his phone back in his pocket and leans back on the bench behind him, arms folded, watching the steady rise and fall of the Soldier’s chest. Like this, he could be Bucky. Steve wonders who the Soldier is in his dreams. Is he the weapon HYDRA created, or is he the boy from Brooklyn, dreaming of the war and Coney Island and Steve?

“Cap, come and look at this.”

Tony and Bruce are bent over a laptop screen where the information from the blood sample is lit up in lines of red code. “Can we simplify it?” Tony asks, and Bruce nods.

“Maybe get Jarvis to take out the standard readings, leave us with anything we wouldn’t expect to be there.”

Tony straightens and claps his hands together. “Okay Jarvis, hey buddy.” There’s silence. “Good, you passed, well done, now un-mute.”

“Hello, sir,” comes the familiar British accent. 

“Hey, buddy,” Tony says, bending back over the screen. “Can you run this for me, take out the standard readings and leave us with the abnormalities?”

“Already started, sir.”

From the chair where the Soldier is sitting, there comes a feeble groan. All three men wheel around to stare at him. “Banner, tell me you gave him enough to keep him out longer than this.”

“I thought I had,” Banner replies worriedly. 

“The serum,” Steve realized. “HYDRA was trying to replicate mine. My body can process things a lot faster than normal. Wouldn’t be surprised if his does the same.”

“Steve?” comes a choked, confused voice from the chair. “Is that you?”

“Bucky!?” Steve gasps, launching himself at the chair. Bruce and Tony look at each other in alarm, Tony reaching out a moment too late to pull Steve back. “Steve, don’t-”

But Steve is already kneeling beside the chair, hands on the Soldier’s arms, expression hopeful, saying, “Buck, hey, it’s me, you’re okay.”

“Steve,” Bucky repeats, and then, “The fuck am I?”

“With friends,” Steve says. “Safe, I swear, Buck.”

“Then why am I tied up?”

Tony leans over and murmurs to Bruce, “Wait ‘til we tell him it’s 2015.” Bucky looks up, realizing for the first time they’re not alone. 

“Who are they? Wait, Howard?”

“Oh, boy,” Tony sighs. 

“Well, sort of,” Steve replies, and Tony looks offended. At that point, the door to the lab swings open, and Natasha and Clint walk in. Neither of them have suited up, but Clint’s got his bow over his shoulder, a few arrows stuck in his back pocket, and Natasha is in civilian clothes. Bucky jolts at their sudden appearance, startled eyes flicking back to Steve for reassurance, and Natasha freezes. 

“I thought you said he was asleep,” she says quietly, and then Bucky is gone and the Winter Soldier appears. 

“You,” he spits, and begins to struggle against the binds over his legs and arms, hissing and writhing. Tony yanks Steve back by the back of his t-shirt, and Natasha’s gone very still, holding the Soldier’s gaze steadily while he writhes and strains against his ties, and she says quietly, “Sedate him.”

Clint is already pulling an arrow out and fitting it to the bow, and the arrow hits the Soldier in the forearm and sticks. A moment later he’s out cold, head slumped to the side, arrow sticking gruesomely out of his bicep. Steve stares grimly at him and then slowly stands up and pulls the arrow from his arm. It leaves a wound, but it will heal.  
z  
Clint saunters over and takes the arrow back, wiping it on his jeans and then laying it on a table. 

“Did you have to shoot him?” Steve asks, and Clint shrugs.

“None of you could have safely got close enough.” Steve doubts that, the Soldier is tied up and there are five of them, but he appreciates Clint’s concern for their safety. “And after everything he’s put us through, I kind of just really wanted to shoot him.”

Natasha has come closer, eyeing the Soldier warily. “He recognized me. Either from the fall of SHIELD, or… before.”

“Before? You mean, the Red Room?” Steve asks. 

“Yeah. You already know we were somewhat acquainted.”

“But,” Steve begins, looking desperately around at the others. “It was Bucky. For a minute, it was him.”

“The shock of seeing a face from his past, the Soldier’s past, I mean, would have been enough to throw him back,” Bruce explains, putting a hand on Steve’s shoulder. 

“But we know Bucky’s in there, we know we can bring him back now,” Steve says, still looking wildly around for approval, for agreeance. He finds none.

“Maybe,” Bruce concedes. “We’ll try.”

“Sir, the results are ready,” Jarvis says, and Tony takes a deep breath. 

“Alright, let’s see ‘em. Barton, how long will that keep him out?” he says, nodding towards the Soldier still unconscious in his chair. 

“It’ll keep a man down for a couple hours,” he says, and Tony snorts. 

“Better re-dose then.”

Bruce crosses the room and begins to rummage in a cupboard, pulling out some things that he then dumps on the table by the Soldier, and Steve watches him set up a drip.

“This will administer the same amount every ten minutes. Will keep him under as long as we need him to be.”  
Steve doesn’t like it, but he knows it’s the right thing to do. Bruce looks up and sees his worried expression, and gives him a soft smile. “He’ll come out of it fine. It’s just safest for everyone right now.”

Tony is standing on a table, ignoring Bruce’s reproachful look and, “We’re in a sterile facility, Tony,” and Steve watches his make some elaborate arm gesture that calls up a holographic screen in mid-air, one half running code, the other with a microscopic view of what Steve thinks must be Bucky’s DNA. Gesturing to a the first line of code next to some wiggly lines that Steve gives up trying to comprehend, Tony says, “This is the first problem.”

Bruce and Natasha nod knowingly, but Clint glances at Steve, seems relieved that he isn’t the only one with no idea what they’re looking at, and says, “And for those of us who don’t read DNA code?”

Tony sighs. “Basically, this is a sedative. It’s altered the DNA semi-permanently. That seizure we saw back there, that’s the body reverting to it’s natural, sedative-less state.”

“So why are we pumping him full of our own sedative? Won’t that make it worse?” Steve asks, but Bruce is already shaking his head. 

“Different thing altogether. Our stuff isn’t permanent. It doesn’t alter anything, it just slows it all down.”

Steve nods hesitantly, not really understanding but he knows he can trust Banner in what is clearly his field of expertise.

“This bit here,” Tony continues, “is... I’m not actually 100% on this bit. Banner, care to take over?”

“It looks like it attacks the part of the brain that handles long term memory,” Bruce says, moving to a computer and changing the picture they’re all looking at to one of the human brain. A part is highlighted, and Bruce zooms in on it and straightens up. “This here,” he says pointing to a region of the brain, “is the hippocampus. It basically converts short-term memory to long-term memory. It seems the drug they’re using cuts off that pathway, inhibits the transference, meaning the long-term memories are shut off, and new ones can’t be created.”

“So, Bucky will still have the memories that were there before HYDRA?” Steve asks.

“It’s probable. Whether or not the stress of the drug will have permanently damaged the pathways, we can’t tell yet.”

“What’s going on in the pre-frontal cortex?” Tony jumps in with, and Banner squints at the screen.

Steve eyes Tony suspiciously. “When did you become an expert in neurology?” 

Tony looks at him defiantly. “5 minutes ago.” Steve sighs.

“By the looks of it,” Banner is saying, “the part that controls retention of long-term memory is unaffected. They’ve focused on hindering the conversion, not the retention. Which is good news for us. For Bucky.”

The glimmer of hope in Steve’s stomach is growing steadily into a warm glow, and he lets out a deep breath he’d been unaware he was even holding. Natasha looks at him sharply.

“Don’t get your hopes up, Cap. We don’t know the half of it yet.” Steve lets his gaze fall back on the sleeping Soldier, and is surprised when Tony butts in.

“You know what, let him hope. I think we all need a bit of hope.”

Bruce is fiddling with the finer points of the code, struggling to reach the height Tony’s projected the image at, and Tony helpfully pushes the hologram down a little and jumps off the table. 

“Natasha, where can we get a hold of Winter Soldier’s file? Assuming SHIELD have extensive records.”

“That’s the problem,” Natasha says. “Before we got to know him, SHIELD had nothing. He was a myth. I can pull what info we do have on him, but it won’t be much.”

“You get on that, Banner can keep being on this, and I’ll be on alcohol. Who else needs a drink?”

Clint snorts but follows Stark out of the room. Steve hovers anxiously beside Bucky, wondering what he can possibly do to help, and Banner looks over and smiles sympathetically. “Go. I’ll call you as soon as I’ve got anything. When did you last eat?”

Steve shakes his head and hovers a while longer, stroking a hand over Bucky’s hair, watching the rise and fall of his chest, until a hand lands on his shoulder. 

“Really,” Banner says, “He’s okay. Go eat, go talk to Stark about where you’re going to put him, make sure Clint’s not shooting anyone full of arrows.”

When Steve walks into the kitchen on Stark’s floor, Clint is perched on the bench and Stark is pouring a large glass of something distinctly alcoholic.

“Want one?” he says, holding up the bottle, and Steve shakes his head. He opens the fridge, stares blankly inside for a second, and closes it again.

“Jarvis, can you order us some takeout?” Stark says as if reading Steve’s mind. 

“Certainly sir, what kind would you like?”

“Uh, what do they eat in Russia?” 

Steve glares, and Tony raises his free hand in mock surrender. “Okay, sorry, too soon.”

“Chinese,” Clint says, just as Steve says, “Pizza.”

“Ordering 5 large pizzas, two boxes of fried rice, 24 wontons and two containers of sweet and sour pork,” Jarvis replies.

“Thanks, man,” Clint grins, and Steve smiles up at the ceiling.

“For the last time, he’s not actually in the ceiling-” Stark begins and then gives up.

Steve ignored him. “When- if he gets through this, what do we do?”

Tony takes a large swig of his drink, and raises his eyebrows in thought. “Well, there’s space here. He can share your floor, or we can build him his own.”

“My floor?”

“Sure, you guys should be used to living in close quarters.”

“No, go back. I have my own floor? You mean here?”

“In case you wanna sleep over,” Stark replies flippantly, and Clint smirks, leaning in to whisper loudly in Steve’s ear.

“Apparently building people things is how Tony shows love.”

“Barton, get a life,” Tony shoots, picking up a tablet off the coffee table.

“So what do I have to do to get my own floor?” Clint asks with a sly smile.

“Oh, you’ve got one,” Stark replies, and Clint looks so surprised Steve wishes he was holding a camera.

“I- What? Why?”

“You’ve all got one. You just never asked.”

“Why would I ask that? ‘Hey Stark, by any chance do I have a custom floor in your excessively large tower that you named after us?’” He snorts and shoots Steve a knowing look, and Steve smiles down at his lap. How does Tony still think he’s pulling off ‘couldn’t care less’? 

“I didn’t name it after us, I just never got the other letters replaced,” Tony replies.

Clint has jumped down from the bench and is looking steadily more excited. “But seriously, I have a floor? What number? You mean I’m paying rent in a sub-par, sub-secret Manhattan apartment building, when I could have my own floor?” 

Tony shrugs. “They’re only just finished. I was going to tell you.”

Clint is already up and crossing the room to the elevator. “What number?”

“Top,” Stark says without looking up.

Fitting, Steve thinks. A nest for a hawk.

“And we’ll all pretend we don’t notice when Natasha stays over!” Stark calls after him, and the last thing they see through the closing elevator doors is Clint flipping them the bird.

 

Bucky stays under sedation for three days, moved to a hospital bed Banner acquires in the corner of the lab in which Tony and Bruce spend every waking moment. Steve frets, Clint sits on things, and Pepper tries to get them both to stop.

“Steve, stop pacing, you’re wearing holes in the carpet. Clint, could you not sit on the bench, I literally just cleaned that. Tony, there you are, what is that? Put that away, I don’t even know what that is.”

Clint hops down off the bench, Tony looks offended and walks out of the room as quickly as he came in, and Steve gives up pacing in favour of running after Tony. “Tony, wait, what’s happening?”

“Nothing as such-” but Steve cuts him off. 

“Is that part of Bucky’s arm?” 

“Uh, yup, actually it is, now don’t freak out-”

“Don’t freak out? Are you kidding me? You’re taking him apart now, is that it?”

“Well to be fair, HYDRA already did that pretty effectively,” Tony tries, but Steve just throws him a dirty look and stomps off towards the elevator.

Banner is leaning over the Soldier when Steve bursts through the doors, and he looks guiltily down at the place where the Soldier’s arm should be. “Cap, it’s for his own good, we had to see if there was anything in there that HYDRA can track him with.”

Steve tries to brush the expression of annoyance off his face. He knows they’re just trying to help, but he feels a sense of responsibility over the Soldier, over Bucky more than anyone. The arm is lying in parts over the bench top, and Tony comes in behind Steve and puts the piece of arm he was carrying down beside the rest of it. 

“What’s up, Doc?” Tony asks, and Banner sighs. 

“No sign of a tracker, GPS or otherwise. I’m just looking at the connection at the moment. The way they’ve patched the nerve endings through to the cybernetic reactors, it’s brilliant. I can’t quite figure out how they’ve retained full rotation in the elbow, though, without pinching this part here.” He moves to gesture to a part of the arm lying on the bench, and Tony picks up the end part of the arm, and waves the fingers at Bruce.

“Need a hand?”

Steve removes himself from the situation before he takes the hand and strangles Tony with it.

Natasha is leaning on the wall opposite the door as Steve comes out of the lab. She tilts her head and gives him a small smile. “I’m heading down to the gym. Care for a bit of sparring practice?”

Steve, who is feeling rather in the mood to hurl someone around, albeit not Natasha, takes what he can get. “Sure. Meet you down there in five.”

The physical exercise is just what Steve needs. Nobody’s tried to take over the world in a while, and with SHIELD on the down-and-out they don’t have any orders to follow. Coulson keeps in contact, but they don’t have an official commander. Steve dreads to think what would happen if another alien attack came tomorrow, with only the five of them, Thor not included, between the aliens and success.

Come sun-down, Steve is sweating and panting and has destroyed three punching bags and only been beaten by Natasha once. His mood is vastly improving when they’re interrupted by Jarvis.

“Tony is requesting the Avengers assemble in Doctor Banner’s laboratory.”

Steve pauses mid-swing, giving Natasha the opportunity to catch him hard in the side with her fist. “Oof,” Steve grunts, and Natasha looks guilty. “Sorry.”

Steve strips off his gloves and helmet and tosses them aside, already feeling a sick panic beginning to rise from his stomach. Natasha is right behind him as he runs out of the gym, skidding around the corner and slamming his hand onto the elevator button. Natasha’s face is tense, staying very still in comparison to Steve’s anxious shifting as they wait for the lift. Eventually it comes and Steve throws himself in and jabs the button. “We need stairs in this building.”

Natasha doesn’t reply, but she puts a hand on Steve’s arm and says, “Stop panicking. Jarvis would have told us if we needed to suit up.”

Steve knows this, but he’s still terrified. When the doors open on the lab, Steve throws himself out of them ready for a fight, and is startled when he sees Tony sitting on a wheelie chair, arms folded and legs kicked out in front of him, and Banner leaning on the bench next to him. Clint is perched on a stool a few metres away, bow resting on the table along with a couple of arrows, but what makes Steve’s breath catch in his throat is the back of Bucky’s head.

The bed has been turned around to face away from the lift, which Steve immediately thinks Bucky will hate, and is set in the upright position. Tony looks up when they arrive and says immediately, “Widow, you need to stay in the lift for a moment.”

Natasha doesn’t protest, and takes a couple steps backwards into the elevator. Steve almost runs across the room to reach the bed, and almost cries with relief when Bucky looks up at him and says, “Hey, pal.”

“Bucky, God, hey, are you okay?”

“I guess. I mean, I’m here. Where are we?”

Steve just shakes his head. “It’s a very long story.”

“Tony, right?” Bucky nods at Stark, and Tony raises his eyebrows.

“That’s me.”

“How are you related to Howard? Brother or something? I don’t think you’re quite old enough to be his dad.”

Tony chokes silently on his own saliva, and Steve has to laugh. 

“Also Steve, buddy… where’s my arm?”

Steve looks to where Bucky is gazing down at the empty space where his arm should be. There are metal connections still attached to his shoulder, and empty sockets where the parts of his metal arm had fit so perfectly. 

“That’s also a long story. I’m afraid that’s one part of you you’re not gonna get back.”

Bucky nods and looks like he’s a little choked up. “Figured as much. How did it happen? Shrapnel? Tell me I at least saved somebody’s life?” he smiles ruefully, and Steve doesn’t even know what to say.

Banner saves him. “Steve, can I have a word?” He moves towards the elevator where Natasha is still standing, and beckons Steve to follow. Steve gives Bucky’s good shoulder a squeeze. 

“I’ll be right back.”

He follows Banner to the lift, takes a deep breath, trying to calm his rollercoaster emotions.

“Steve, I need you to understand that the Bucky you were just talking to, he isn’t the Bucky we’ll end up with if this works. This is the Bucky from the war. He doesn’t remember anything of HYDRA, any of what he did, any of what happened since the fall. His mind would have repressed that memory, and then with the drugs they used, the rest of it, well, you could say it’s filed in a different cabinet. I told you his hippocampus was inhibited? The stuff we’ve released, that’s the old Bucky, the long-term memory. The stuff we’ve managed to hold back, disable that part of the hippocampus, the short-term memory, that’s the Winter Solder.”

“Well that’s great, isn’t it?” Steve says. “He doesn’t remember the hell he went through, we’ve got Bucky back.”

“It’s not that simple. He can’t stay like that forever. We need to let him see both sides. He’s got to have both sets of memories, or his brain will burn out. We can’t keep him on those drugs forever.”

“So what do we do, take him off the drugs and let the Winter Soldier out again?” Steve says angrily, having no idea where Banner is going with this.

“No. We let him see both sets of memories, but we let him sort through them as Bucky, not as the Soldier.”

“How do we do that?”

Banner sighs. “Natasha, that’s where you come in. We need a link between the past Bucky and the Winter Soldier. You’re that link. Tony and I both think that if we explain what’s about to happen to Bucky, before we introduce you, he should be more open to accepting both sets of memories without harming himself. You’re the link.”

“Sounds dangerous,” is all Natasha says, but she smiles at Steve. “I’m in.”

“At the same time,” Banner continues, “We change the drug to a light sedative, something that will calm him but leave him awake. The memory inhibiting drugs are gone, so he’ll be able to see everything, and with Natasha there the Winter Soldier will definitely try to make a reappearance. Steve, you have to ground him. You have to be, to put it ineloquently, the counter-link. Natasha is everything bad that happened, and you-”

“I’m everything good.” Steve finishes. He feels sick. “Let’s do it.”

 

Steve and Bruce cross the room to stand at Bucky’s bedside once again, and Steve takes Bucky’s hand. “Okay pal, we’re gonna introduce you to a friend, okay? I swear, she’s a friend. I trust her with my life, and you’re perfectly safe here.”

“S’not Peggy, is it?” Bucky says with a wry smile, and Steve laughs, feeling the prickle of tears at the back of his eyes. 

“No, not Peggy.

Banner changed the drip over, removing the memory drugs and introducing the sedative, and Bucky smiles lazily. “Well, bring her on in.”

Natasha, on Bruce’s signal, steps cautiously into the room and, sticking to the wall, comes round in view of the bed. Bucky looks over, and freezes.

“Talk to him, Steve. Ground him.”

“Bucky, hey, I told you, it’s okay. Her name is Natasha, and you’re right, you do know her. You’re gonna start remembering a whole lotta stuff now, stuff you didn’t have control over, bad stuff. But it’s okay, you’re safe, I’m here, we’re here, you’re alive.”

Bucky is breathing hard, even through the effects of the sedative. His eyes are wide and he can’t take them off Natasha. Steve squeezes his hand, hard, and Bucky’s eyes flick back to Steve. 

“Steve, how do I know her?”

“You’ll remember, just calm down, okay buddy? You gotta stay calm.”

“Good, you’re doing good,” Bruce says, and when Steve glances up, he’s staring intently at the monitor beside the bed. Stark is hunched forward on the chair, elbows on his knees, and Clint has picked up his bow and is carefully twirling an arrow. Steve tries to keep himself calm.

Natasha is just standing a few metres away, not moving, not giving any sign of defense or attack, and then she says, “они не могут причинить нам боль сейчас.”

Bucky’s eyes flash, and he snarls, and Steve puts a hand on his shoulder, says urgently, “Bucky, look at me.” The Winter Soldier turns his head and growls at Steve, and then gasps and sucks air into his lungs and says, “Steve, help me.”

“It’s okay, pal, you’re safe. I know this is hard. Just calm down.”

Bucky continues to breathe great lungfuls of air, eyes still panicked and hand gripping at Steve’s own. 

“What did you say?” Banner asks Natasha quietly, and Steve hears her reply.

“‘They can’t hurt us now.’”

Bucky is still visibly struggling, and then Natasha steps forward a little and the Soldier says, “Где я?”

“сейф,” Natasha assures him. “He asked where he was,” she says for the benefit of everyone else. “I said he was safe.”

Steve nods and keeps stroking a thumb over the back of Bucky’s hand, telling him he’s okay, to breathe, he’s not in danger. Bucky seems to be becoming more and more agitated, until finally he snaps and lets out a bloodcurdling scream. He tenses everywhere, gripping Steve’s hand so hard he can feel his own pulse, and then Steve feels a hand on his arm yanking him away but he shakes it off, “No, I’m staying!” and then Bucky is quiet.

His face is contorted in a grimace of pain, his limbs are shaking and he’s burning up. Steve leans forward and says quietly, “Bucky?”

Bucky takes a deep breath, then tips his head forward to meet Steve’s eyes, and it damn near breaks his heart when he says, “I remember.”

 

For almost a week Bucky stays in the bed in their makeshift hospital, with Steve hardly ever leaving his side. Pepper brings him food and doesn’t tell him he needs to rest, but when Steve falls asleep on the couch they’ve moved in there, he wakes up in the morning with a blanket over him. 

He calls Sam and fills him in. He’d been instrumental in the few months directly after the fall of SHIELD, helping Steve in his painful attempt to track the Soldier. Natasha had helped from a distance, having her own problems to attend to, but Sam had been there for Steve. Of course Steve didn’t blame him for wanting his civilian life back, but he made sure to keep in touch. Sam was good with listening. He tells him about how Bucky, ironically, came to them, and how he’s making progress and it looks promising. Sam tells him to call any time, and then says, “Introduce me sometime, alright?” Steve promises.

Bucky isn’t very talkative at first, disappearing into his own head, which ironically, hasn’t been fully his in over 50 years. Steve makes up for his silence, tells him how they won the war, but he wasn’t around to see it. 

When he tells him he swan-dived a plane into the Antarctic, Bucky throws a book at him and rants for a good twenty minutes about Steve being the “dumbest, most foolhardy and goddamn selfless idiot he’s ever met,” and God help him, “I’d have killed you for that stunt, you fuckin’ punk, I can’t believe you.” Steve just smiles and nods resignedly and lets him rant, and when it’s over, Bucky sleeps for an hour and Steve moves to lie next to him on the bed, stroking his hair and telling him over and over that he’s sorry. 

Bruce comes in a while later to find them both asleep, the bed looking far too small and definitely not sturdy enough for a full time job holding a super-soldier and his best friend. Steve has his head tilted sideways to rest on the top of Bucky’s, and Bucky’s hand is clasped around a piece of Steve’s sleeve. He leaves them be, and tells Jarvis to send anyone away.

Bucky gets acquainted with Jarvis, too. He, like Steve, is sure he’s some god-like entity that hangs around in Stark’s ceiling, and Clint always gets a kick out of asking Jarvis for something and watching the ‘old-timers’ look skyward. Despite this, Bucky and Clint seem to get on. Steve thinks it’s because they share the same sense of humour.

Steve feels like he’s neglecting his team a little, but they seem to have rallied around each other better than he could have hoped, eating meals together, sparring together, and for the first time in a very long time, he knows he’s never actually alone. It should make him edgy, he thinks, not having his privacy, but the Tower is so big it doesn’t matter. Since they’ve all moved into their respective floors it’s not like they’re lacking in space. 

It’s not that he feels Bucky needs watching over, it’s just that any time he spends away from Bucky feels like time wasted. Bucky catches him staring sometimes, Steve’s chin resting in his hand, or over the top of a book, just staring at Bucky fingers flicking through pictures on his tablet, or at the way his hair falls over his face when his head’s bent over a book. Bucky will look up and give him an embarrassed smile, push his hair back and say, “I’m still here, Stevie. Not just gonna evaporate in a puff of smoke.” Steve smiles. He knows that. He just can’t seem to stop staring.

He gives Bucky the full rundown on the team. It takes him a good day and a half to explain Tony. The daddy issues take up almost an hour, and at the end of it, Bucky gives Steve a look like he’s just ruined a child’s sandcastle, and says, “Howard didn’t drive that car off a cliff. At least, he didn’t mean to.”

Steve tells Tony the next night down in his garage, without preamble and as gently as possible, that the Winter Soldier killed his parents. Tony just stares at him. Steve nods once, and then gets the hell outta dodge. Steve and Pepper come in half an hour later to find the workshop in turmoil. Cabinets are tipped over, pieces of the suit lie all over the floor, paper and tools litter the entire space and it looks like someone’s been shooting a potato gun at a wall. Tony is sitting on the floor with his back against a cabinet, head tilted back, eyes closed. Pepper sits down next to him and Steve watches from the doorway as Tony opens red-rimmed eyes and says, “I’m okay.” Pepper pats his knee and doesn’t say anything, and Steve slips back out the door. 

A day later, when Tony comes into Bucky’s room, Bucky sits up and begins to say, “Hey, pal, I’m so sorry, I-”

“Don’t mention it,” Tony says. “You weren’t running the show.”

As the drugs work their way out of Bucky’s system, Steve guesses he’s in more pain than he’s letting on. Sometimes mid-conversation he’ll tense up, grimace and grit his teeth, a few times panic and grab for the bucket Bruce kindly put beside his bed, and throw up whatever crappy takeaways Steve snuck down to him earlier that day. Bruce says it will pass. It’s like any withdrawal, he says.

He has nightmares, too, and Steve knows what that’s like. He wakes often during the night to see Bucky sweating and writhing and gasping for air, and when that happens he gently wakes Bucky up and sits with him, telling him stories and then makes Bucky tell him some, liking to hear the way Bucky remembers the war, their childhood. Bruce says it’s good for his recovery. 

Sometimes he tells Steve about his time as the Soldier, about the missions he was on, the places he went. He doesn’t remember much, as the memories were hardly converted to long-term because of the drugs. He remembers snippets though. Snowy France at Christmas, and the cold seeping through his boots as he stood for hours in wait for the target. Sunny Spain, and only being allowed out at night, mask and combat boots too hot in the still warm hours of darkness. He remembers New York the most, and pulling Steve out of the Potomac. 

“I can’t believe it,” he says late one night, Steve reading a book in the dim light of a lamp beside the bed, and Bucky scrolling through a tablet Stark’s given him. He’d shown him how to work YouTube, and Bucky had never gone back. He’s coping pretty okay for a guy missing an arm, and whenever Steve asks Tony about it, Tony flaps a hand and says he’s working on something.

“Can’t believe what?” Steve says, looking up. 

“It’s fuckin’ unreal.” Steve looks at him reproachfully for the language, and Bucky ignores it. “Of all the people in all the world, and of all fucking coincidences, you end up frozen in some goddamn ice, and I end up a lab rat for a super-evil-genius, and now we’re here. How does that even happen?”

Steve snorts. “Guess we’re just a walking coincidence,” he smiles, and Bucky laughs. Opening his mouth again, Steve hesitates. “Why did you come here? That day on the roof.”

Bucky shrugs. “Like I said. Nowhere else to go.”

“But how did you know where I was? Even who I was?”

“I remembered.” Bucky says quietly.

Steve is shocked. “The Soldier remembered me?”

Shaking his head, Bucky explains. “It came and went. At the end of every mission the drugs would be wearing off and being out of cryo for so long, I’d start to remember. Things would come back. You were always the first thing to come back. I didn’t know how I knew you, if you were alive, if I’d met you before or after HYDRA, but I’d see your face, and I’d know you were important. When I saw you on the bridge and you said my name, I wasn’t long enough out of cryo for me to know who you were. But back at the lab, I just kept seeing your face and I, stupidly, asked if I knew you, and then they wiped me again.”

“That’s… I don’t know what to say. That’s awful, Buck. I’m so sorry. I tried to find you, you know. Me and Sam, we looked everywhere. Every database, every secret base we could uncover. We tore down half of HYDRA looking for you. Not that there was much left.”

“After the helicarrier, I didn’t go back. They looked, I mean they sent out a re-con team, they scoured every inch of this city. There weren’t many men left, but I guess their final order was to get me back. I killed every last one of ‘em. And then I came here.”

“Why here?”

“Most defendable building. I looked you up, all of you. Didn’t think I could trust Stark as far as I could throw him, but I knew I could trust you. I just had to shake off my tail first.”

 

Stark appears one afternoon with a smug look on his face, holding a badly wrapped parcel behind his back. Pepper’s just behind him and she gives Steve one of those, I tried to stop him looks. Bucky looks up in alarm as Tony places the badly wrapped mystery on the bed in front of him and then looks at him expectantly.

“Thanks?” Bucky says, and pulls the package towards him. As he rips off the first piece of awful Christmas paper, which, really Stark, it’s nowhere near Christmas, Steve thinks, it becomes obvious what the thing is.

Bucky barks a laugh as he pulls the rest of the paper off to reveal a sleek metal arm. “This is the fuckin’ weirdest thing I’ve ever unwrapped, I’ll give you that,” he says in badly concealed delight. Tony watches him as he turns over the arm and then makes the fingers wave at Steve. Steve sighs. When Bucky holds the arm out to him as if to shake, and says, “Pleased to meet you, Captain,” Steve can’t hold back his smile. 

“Need a hand?” Stark quips, reusing a joke that clearly didn’t garner a satisfactory reaction last time, and Bucky cracks up. Steve just puts his head in his hands.

“Seriously though, give it here, do you wanna wear it or play with it?” Tony says, and Bucky looks amused and hands it over. 

“How do you know it’s gonna fit?” he says, and Tony shrugs.

“I took your measurements.”

“When?” Bucky asks, and Tony smiles a little creepily.

“While you were sleeping.” 

Steve is slightly concerned until he remembers Tony still has the original arm, and feels safer. Tony himself is busy sliding all the various catches and pieces together, so the arm fits snugly up against the joining piece of metal still attached to Bucky’s shoulder. They left the original junction plate on, as Tony said it would take a whole lot longer to re-wire all the nerve endings to a new arm if they took it off.

When it’s fitted in place Tony stands back to admire his work, and Steve and Pepper look on proudly as Bucky tries it out. The arm does everything he asks of it, twirling the wrist and bending at the elbow, and he grins happily at Steve.

“Look, now I can do all sorts of things. I can pray, I can use a knife and fork, hell, I can do a Mexican wave!” He demonstrates and Steve snorts. 

“I’m sure that’s an invaluable skill.”

“Thanks, Tony,” Bucky says, earnest now, and Tony looks uncomfortable. “No, really, it’s great. It’s light, it does everything the old one did, well, I’m assuming it can kill a man because it really looks like it can do that… Really. Thank you.”

“No problem, love a project, not an issue, glad you like it,” Stark says, waving a hand and turning back towards the elevator. Pepper smiles at Bucky. 

“He means you’re welcome,” she says, and Bucky nods, smiling back. 

Pretty soon Bruce gives the all clear to be disconnected from all the wires and tubes rigged up around Bucky’s bed, and for the first time Bucky is allowed to see more of the Tower than the lab, hallway and bathroom he’s been going between. 

Steve hasn’t spent much time in the floor Tony’s put aside for him, but he makes an effort to clean up a little, picking up clothes off the floor and shoving them out of sight. With Steve and Clint to lean on, Bucky slides out of the bed and stretches, shirt riding up and eyes squeezed shut as he yawns. Steve realizes he’s staring again and quickly looks away before Bucky opens his eyes.

They ride up in the elevator, Bucky in the middle with a protective Clint and Steve on either side. Natasha even makes an appearance, which she does less often than the rest of the team, as the sight of her still makes Bucky a little wary. “Only ‘cause I know she can kill me with her little finger,” he tells Steve. Steve knows the feeling.

The walls and carpet of Steve’s floor are, thankfully, not red, white and blue, but a soft cream. Everything about it is neutral and calming. Steve loves it, likes the minimal feel of the light furniture and the big floor to ceiling windows on one side of the living room. The first night Bucky’s there, Steve gets out a sketch book and draws him, gazing in awe out of the huge window. It’s just a silhouette, but when Bucky walks behind the couch and catches what Steve’s doing, leaning over his shoulder to get a better look, he gives a soft noise of surprise and puts a hand on Steve’s neck. 

“Always loved your drawings,” he says softly, and then pads off to the kitchen.

It’s not all smooth sailing, by any means. One morning Steve wakes up to crashing outside and runs out in just his old sweatpants to find Bucky, but not Bucky, tearing his living room apart. The Winter Soldier is in full swing, spinning in haphazard circles, one of Steve’s kitchen knives in one hand and, a sight that Clint will almost wet himself over later while watching the video footage, a cheese grater in the other. This, he hurls at Steve’s head, and Steve beats a hasty retreat to yell, “Jarvis, get the others up here, now!” and then puts on a shirt. 

They manage to subdue the Soldier, but not before he’s thrown one of Steve’s favourite dining chairs over the balcony. He’s aiming for Tony, but luckily Tony is used to having things thrown at him and ducks. The chair goes sailing over the edge, and Tony helpfully leans over the railing and yells, “Heads up!” Miraculously, nobody in the street is hurt.

They sedate him with one of Clint’s arrows, but not before Bruce replaces the sedative with a half-strength replica. When the arrow hits the Soldier in the thigh with a loud thwack, he doesn’t fall, but blinks slowly a couple of times before reaching out a hand for the back of the couch and lowering himself dizzily to the floor.

“Steve, talk to him. If we can bring Bucky back like this, it’s progress,” Banner says, and Steve moves anxiously forward. He’s all too aware one wrong move can send them right back to where they were.

“Bucky, hey, it’s Steve. You okay, buddy?”

The Soldier is looking around him, feebly trying to get up and blinking as if trying to clear his vision.

“Bucky, come on, I know you’re there,” Steve says again, crouching in front of him and putting a hand on his knee.

“Steve?” Bucky says, and Steve’s face breaks out in a grin.

“Yeah, hey. Do you know what happened?” 

Bucky nods. “Yeah, I got angry, and suddenly it wasn’t just anger, it was- I wasn’t- God, it hurts,” he gasps, ripping the arrow out of his leg. Steve winces in sympathy and turns to Clint.

“Have you considered taking up darts instead?” 

Clint just shrugs. “I dunno, man. I’m Hawkeye, not Dart-eye.”

Behind him Steve hears Natasha mutter quietly, “You’re so lame.”

Bucky is still shaking his head. “I can feel the rage still, like I have one order, to destroy, just destroy everything. How does someone live with this much rage?”

“You get used to it,” Steve hears, and he turns his head to see Bruce standing a few feet behind him, mouth pulled tight in a wry smile. He comes closer and kneels beside Steve.

“Bucky, can you do something for me?” Bruce asks, and Bucky nods shakily. 

“I need you to focus on stuff that makes you who you are. Remember the war, remember Brooklyn, remember your family and your friends-”

Bucky gives an unexpected snort. “Only had one of them,” he says, and Steve lets out a slightly hysterical noise somewhere between a laugh and a sob.

“Well, sometimes one is enough,” Bruce says, and Steve looks at him as he goes on, “But you’ve more than one now.”

Bucky’s breathing gradually returns to normal and as he relaxes, everyone lets out a joint sigh of relief. Steve looks around his beautiful, destroyed living room, and says, “Stark, can we perhaps look at getting Bucky his own floor?”

Bucky smacks him none too gently in the arm, but he’s grinning. “Sorry, pal. I know you liked those chairs.”

Bucky surprises everyone one day by announcing, “I wanna learn to control it.” By now he’s watched footage of the Hulk, finding it a hard concept to grasp from Steve’s description alone, and is impressed at the tenuous hold Banner seems to have on his alter-ego. 

“Well, it would certainly save a few tears the next time something triggers you,” Banner agrees, and this is how they all end up in the gym every afternoon for the next two weeks, taking it turns to rile Bucky up, and then help bring him back. It’s a crude method, but since none of them are specialists and Steve is unwilling to call one in, this is all they’ve got.

They quickly ascertain Natasha is the best at it, which surprises all of them, especially Steve. Banner muses that perhaps her connection with the Winter Soldier is in some way helpful, but Steve doesn’t care as long as it works. Steve himself is the worst, not even achieving the relatively simple task of winding Bucky up enough to bring the Soldier out. He gives up after twenty minutes and lets Natasha step in. All it takes is to drop into her defensive stance, and Bucky is gone.

Halfway through the second week, Bucky manages to pull himself back with no sedative used at all. On Steve’s insistence, they’ve stopped using arrows, and Natasha has taken to calling Clint ‘Dart-eye’ just to piss him off. “I said it in the heat of the moment, okay! It doesn’t even make sense! I don’t shoot people with hawks!” he whines, and Natasha just smirks and doesn’t stop. 

The Soldier is facing Black Widow on the sparring mat, with the others all pressed up to the glass window in the hallway outside, watching. Natasha is about to throw another kick when the Soldier glances at the windows and says, “Do they always do that? Feel like a goddamn zoo animal,” and Natasha is so surprised she doesn’t know what to say. 

From then on, it takes less and less time for Bucky to rein in the Soldier, until eventually, he never loses control at all. Bucky is still himself when he fights, only a little zoned out, solely focused on what he’s doing, who he’s attacking. He can slip into the Soldier at will, skillset gleaming and deadly, and in order to practice properly Stark creates a holographic war zone, with enemies and explosions and everything. Steve can tell he’s proud of it, and everyone gets a go. Clint dies almost straight away, as the game doesn’t really allow a player to just perch on a building and shoot things for an extended period of time as Clint adopts as his tactic, but he comes out sweating and grinning and enthuses, “It’s like the world’s coolest xbox game, but, live.”

Stark says, “My game is far beyond the meager capabilities of an xbox, thank you Barton, but I’ll take it.”

Steve looks around at his team and smiles. Natasha catches his eye and says, “Don’t get all teary on us, Cap.” Steve just laughs.

Weeks pass and Coulson is duly informed of the presence of the Winter Soldier in their midst. Of course he freaks out, but Tony just informs him mid-conversation that he’s unavailable, but would he like to leave a message with his life-model decoy? and hangs up. Pepper sighs heavily and says, “Tony, you can’t keep doing that.”

Rhodey is invited round to officially met Bucky, and Tony informs him he should feel honoured to be the only person they’re willingly introducing. Rhodey ignores him and holds out a hand to Bucky. “Pleased to meet you, Sergeant Barnes.” Steve can tell Bucky’s pretty thrilled to have someone address him like that after all this time.

“Honour’s all mine,” Bucky says, all charm as usual. “Heard a lot about you.”

Unsurprisingly they get on like a house on fire, and Tony moves to stand next to Steve as the others all laugh and talk around the coffee table, Rhodey telling a story that has Bucky in peals of laughter next to him, and Tony says, “Ever feel like you’re losing your best friend?”

Steve quirks a smile. “Yep.”

He knows it isn’t true though. When he and Bucky are the last ones left in the lift when everyone goes their separate ways, and Bucky says “Have fun tonight, pal?” and throws an arm around Steve’s shoulders, pulling him in against his side. He has to reach up to do it now, and Steve gives a soft laugh when Bucky says, “I thought you were smaller.”

Steve takes Bucky running with Sam, the first time he’s been himself for a while. They meet in the park as usual, and Sam gets up from the bench and holds out a hand to Bucky when they walk up.

“You must be Bucky Barnes, pleased to meet you at last. I’m Sam Wilson.”

“Hey Sam, good to finally put a name to the face,” Bucky says. “Steve here never shuts up about you.”

Steve pulls a face. “I’ve mentioned him maybe four times, come on, Buck.”

Bucky grins and Sam laughs. “I like his version better. Anyway, are we here to run?”

Afterwards Sam will swear on his life he’s never going running with two super-humans ever again, but they all know he’s lying. “Same time next week?” Steve asks, and Sam just laughs, shaking his head, and puts it in his phone. 

 

Steve sleeps late the next day and wanders out into his living room around ten thirty, hair mussed, yawning, to find Bucky already sitting at the head of the table eating breakfast.

“I can’t believe we missed the 70’s, pal,” Bucky whines around a mouthful of toast, and Steve looks amused as he takes a box of cereal out of the cupboard. He fills a bowl, adds milk, and then comes to sit at the table. 

He looks back at Bucky over his bowl and says, “What are you reading?” Bucky has his face scrunched up in a sort of disgusted way as he scrolls through, from what Steve can make out, a the Wikipedia page on ‘disco’. 

“You think dancing was wild back in our time, boy does it get worse,” Bucky says, and Steve laughs.

“I didn’t think it was particularly wild, I just had two left feet.” 

“Yeah, I got all the coordination as well as the looks,” Bucky grins at him.

They’re interrupted by a door banging and Tony sauntering into the room as if he owns the place. Well, technically he does, Steve thinks, but it’s still goddamn annoying. He likes Tony, he really does, but Pepper’s in LA for the week and Tony’s already acting like a bored child.

“Morning fellas, is it morning? Afternoon? Is brunch a time of day, we could go with that. Despite it being almost eleven and you two are still enjoying breakfast, but hey, I get it, things were slower in your day.”

He pours himself a glass of milk and comes to read over Bucky’s shoulder. “Whatcha reading?”

“Wikipedia,” Bucky murmurs, still focused on the screen. Then clarifies, “Disco.”

Tony grins. “One hell of a decade, I tell you. Peace, love and marijuana,” he quips.

“You would have been ten,” Steve snarks at him before he can stop himself, and the corner of Bucky’s mouth quirks upwards. Dealing with Stark within an hour of waking up is still not Steve’s strong point. 

“Was there something you needed, Tony?” Steve asks, and Tony looks at him for a second, then raises his glass. 

“Milk. Didn’t have any.”

“Right. Maybe we should ask Jarvis to restock?”

“Well yeah, but even I haven’t invented a way for the groceries to automatically appear in your fridge as soon as you buy them.”

Steve glares at Bucky, who’s doing a very bad job of holding in a laugh. Stark takes another sip of milk, and not seeming to either notice or mind the milk-moustache he ends up with, says, “Someone got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning.” Steve just glares at his cereal until Stark goes away.

Bucky knows better than to try and wheedle him back into a good mood, and Steve goes to take a shower.

Half an hour later, he wanders back out into the living room but doesn’t find Bucky. “Jarvis, you seen Bucky?”

“Mr Barnes is in the gym, sir,” Jarvis informs him, and Steve heads down in the elevator. Through the glass window through to the gym he sees Natasha and Bucky sparring on the mat in the centre of the room, with Clint leaning on the wall by the door. He gently opens it and slips through.

He can hear Bucky talking as he ducks and punches, giving as good at he’s getting from Natasha. “I’m just saying, compared to the old days, it’s not even music, but it’s kinda catchy!” 

Natasha raises her eyebrows and blocks Bucky’s hit, and then goes for his left leg, saying, “Music’s come a long way, I’ll give you that. Not always for the better. You heard of dubstep?”

“Who’s dubstep?” Bucky asks, ducking a blow and then successfully landing a hit on Natasha’s shoulder. 

Steve can tell Bucky’s not really trying, is lacking the determined look and blank expression he usually has when he’s falling back into the Soldier. Steve joins Clint in leaning on the wall and Bucky’s gaze flicks over to him, and then back in time to duck Natasha’s roundhouse kick. Without breaking her rhythm, Natasha calls across the gym, “How sweet, both our boyfriends showed up to watch.”

Bucky’s eyes widen and Natasha, predictably, takes the opportunity his sudden lack of concentration provides and has him down on the mat in just under two seconds. Steve tries to hide how red his face has grown and Clint crows annoyingly beside him. “Suck it Rogers, team Clintasha for the win.”

“Don’t call us that,” Natasha says as she comes towards them and then brushes past out the door. Clint pulls a face at Steve, and follows. 

Bucky has levered himself up gingerly off the mat, rolling the shoulder of his metal arm. “Had her on the ropes ‘til you walked in,” he says, giving Steve a wry smile. 

“Sure you did,” Steve laughs. Bucky is sweating through his thin blue t-shirt, muscled torso showing through the fabric, face flushed and eyebrows drawn in a way Steve knows means he’s silently berating himself for letting Natasha win. 

“So because I just got beaten spectacularly, I’d say it’s my turn to pick something off the list, and your turn to make popcorn.”

“Oh, you think? What about that rule, ‘person who picks, makes the popcorn’?” Steve smirks.

“Stupid rule, I never agreed to it,” Bucky says with a shrug, and then heads for the door.

Steve follows. “You made it up!”

“Can’t prove it,” Bucky says, turning to grin over his shoulder at Steve.

Steve’s heart skips a beat, and he ducks his head to hide his smile.

As they walk through the door to Steve’s living room, Bucky strips his damp t-shirt up and over his head. Steve tries not to stare, he really does, but the way Bucky’s back muscles work as he pulls the shirt over his head does something to his insides. The rigorous training he was put through, first as the Soldier, and even now by his own choice, mean he’s muscled up a lot. Even so, he’s still lean and quick on his feet, as the Soldier always fought slippery. Where Captain America faces something head on, plants his feet, stands his ground, the Winter Soldier will be gone before you’ve even swung your first hit, landing cat-like behind you to swing his own fist before you’ve even had time to turn. Neither way is better. They’re just different.

Bucky considers the list of movie suggestions they’ve stuck up on the fridge. They tend to take anything Stark suggests with a grain of salt, but Clint contributes a lot, Banner too. The one Bucky chooses this time, though, was put there by Natasha. 

Steve types it into Stark’s almost endless movie library, and then presses play on ‘The Matrix.’  
Two and a half hours later, Steve is shaking his head, and Bucky is grinning. “Awesome,” he says, as Steve makes a face. “What, you didn’t like it?”

“It’s not that, I just think it’s a bit unbelievable.” He shrugs and gets up off the sofa.

“Well yeah, that’s what they want you to think,” Bucky grins, wiggling his eyebrows at Steve as he follows him to the kitchen. 

Steve puts the empty popcorn bowl down on the counter and turns to lean against it. “Would you prefer it?”

“What?” Bucky says as he opens the fridge and gazes inside.

“If that turned out to be real.”

Shutting the fridge, Bucky turns to look at him, shaking his head ruefully. “Nah, probably not. I think I’ve had enough of my reality stolen.” 

Steve’s face must convey everything his heart feels in that moment, all the anger at HYDRA, the pain at what Bucky went through, is going through, and how he’d give his left arm, no joke intended, to take what happened away.

“Don’t get all emotional on me, Rogers,” Bucky says with a soft expression. “Didn’t mean anything by it.”

“I hate it. I hate what happened, what they did to you, I hate that I didn’t look for you, I hate that godforsaken war-” Steve chokes on the last part, pulling his sentence to an abrupt halt, and Bucky shakes his head and comes over. He puts his hands out to lean on the bench on either side of Steve, whose hands are balled into fists at his sides and eyes are closed. When he opens them, Bucky is very close.

“Don’t. Because if all that hadn’t happened, where would I be right now?” and Steve just shakes his head. “Dead and buried in the ground, that’s where. I’d be long gone, and you, you’d still have put that plane in the ice, I know you would have, and we’d have lived the rest of our lives without each other. And I know you’d miss not havin’ me around to eat your food and take your socks and pick the movies.”

A strangled laugh breaks free of Steve’s mouth, and Bucky smiles, one half of his mouth lifting in a look so ultimately him that Steve has to close his eyes, and then before he can stop himself he puts out his arms and wraps them around Bucky’s shoulders and pulls him in for a hug. Bucky gives a shaky laugh and goes with it, sliding his own arms around Steve’s waist and breathing in deeply. 

They stand like that for a while, Steve not wanting to let go and Bucky pliant and warm in his hold. Eventually, Bucky says, “So we can maybe cross the Matrix 2 and 3 off the list?” and a laugh bursts out of Steve’s mouth, and he lets go. 

“Sequels are never as good, anyway.”

He doesn’t say anything about the suspicious redness to Bucky’s eyes, and he’s glad Bucky doesn’t mention his. Instead, Bucky just smiles and shakes his head and leans back against the counter opposite Steve, and then Jarvis says, “Good evening Captain Rogers, Sergeant Barnes.” It startles Steve out of his thoughts, and Bucky still not used to voices coming out of nowhere, jumps violently.

“Shit Jarvis, give a man a little warning.”

“I’m sorry, sir. Would you like me to play a little opening music every time I’m about to speak?”

Steve snorts, and Bucky looks up in disbelief. “Chip off the old block, ain’t ya?” he says.

Steve smirks and folds his arms over his chest. “What can we do for you, Jarvis?” he asks.

“Tony has requested I inform you there is pizza on the main floor if either of you are interested.”

“Interested? In pizza? Jarvis, as if we could be anything else,” Bucky grins, and doesn’t wait for Steve to agree before he’s swinging out of the room towards the elevator.

The rest of the team are sitting around the table when they come in. Stark’s at the head flicking some diagrams around on a tablet, and Clint’s sitting at the other end with Natasha’s legs kicked up on his lap. Bruce is leaning back in his chair, and all of them are tucking in to giant pieces of very cheesy pizza from the four large boxes laid out along that table. Steve feels his mouth actually water. He pulls out a chair and sits down, and Bucky rounds the table and takes the one opposite him, next to Clint. He picks up a piece of pizza so big he has to use two hands to stop it folding in half, and grins at Steve around a mouthful of cheese. Pulling a face, Steve takes a piece of his own. 

They all munch happily for a few minutes, Tony showing off the new designs for Bucky’s floor, consisting at the moment of the empty space between Steve’s and Clint’s. Nobody’s been allowed up there, and Bucky joked last week that Tony better be installing a bar, a spa bath and his own personal gym with the amount of time it’s taking. Steve won’t admit it even to himself, but he isn’t looking forward to the day when Bucky moves out. 

Tony’s just starting to explain how the ventilation system is going to be redirected when outside the already darkening sky turns almost black, a crash of thunder and a flash of bright lightning split the air, and a couple of seconds later there’s a heavy thud somewhere at the top of the building that’s so loud they can hear it from here. 

They all look up instinctively and Tony says, “It’s like he smelt the pizza.” They all wait expectantly, and then Thor drops down from the roof onto the deck, red cape flapping majestically as he lands a little gracelessly just outside. “Let him in, Jarvis,” Tony says, and the doors pull back and Thor strolls through. 

“My friends!” he booms, placing Mjolnir carefully on the coffee table and then striding towards the table. 

“Hey buddy, you’re back,” Tony says, standing to clap Thor on the shoulder, and Thor slaps him on the back. Tony winces. “Uh, you want pizza?”

“It gladdens me to return to you all, and to find you all together and with such a magnificent feast,” Thor beams ‘round at them all. Then his eyes land on Bucky. Steve, with a sudden jolt of alarm, realizes this is the first time Bucky will have encountered anyone like Thor. He’s sitting wide-eyed in his seat, still glancing nervously at the ceiling. True to form, Thor jovially holds out a hand, a custom they had to teach him a while back. Bucky looks at Steve, who smiles encouragingly. 

Bucky puts down his slice of pizza and stands up, chair scraping on the floor. He tentatively takes Thor’s outstretched hand and Thor grips it tightly, if the look of slight panic on Bucky’s face has anything to do with it. 

“I am Thor, of Asgard, God of Thunder,” Bucky looks back at Steve, and he doesn’t have to say anything for Steve to get is this guy serious? Steve nods and smiles some more, and Bucky looks back to Thor.

“Bucky Barnes, friend of Steve,” Bucky replies. 

“Any friend of the Captain is a friend of mine.” Thor releases Bucky’s hand, and then his eyes move to Bucky’s other arm. Bucky notices and he begins to frown. Thor, however, doesn’t stop smiling and says, “That is a mighty weapon you have there. Have you always possessed it, or was it gifted to you?”

Bucky clearly doesn’t know what to say. “I… It wasn’t exactly a gift. And no, I wasn’t born with it.”

Steve is glancing worriedly between the two, wondering when the appropriate time would be to fill Thor in on the fact that Bucky is an ex-brainwashed-assassin who’s actually as old as Steve. Apparently, the time is now. 

“Bucky’s sorta the same deal as Cap,” Tony says from his end of the table, and Thor’s gaze shifts to him.

Tony continues. “Yeah, him and Cap grew up together. Then he fell off a train and froze for a bit, and now he’s here.” 

Thor’s brow begins to furrow, and he says, “Is this a fate met by many from the 1940s?” 

Bucky barks a laugh, and Tony flaps a hand. “Well you know what they say about coincidence.”

There’s a short silence, and then Clint asks, “what?”

“That… it happens.”

Natasha hides a smirk behind a piece of pizza, and Steve is still frankly astonished at how un-offensive Stark’s explanation was. Thor seems to accept it. “So you are, like the Captain, older than you seem?” he says, turning to Bucky, who nods hesitantly. 

“Yeah, you could say that.”

Luckily Thor doesn’t get to ask any more questions as Clint butts in with, “So how come you’re here?”

Thor, pulling out a chair and taking a piece of pizza admiringly, says, “I come with no further purpose than to see my friends, and Jane.” 

“How are things on Asgard?” Natasha asks.

“Is the Bifrost stable?” Bruce adds.

Bucky slips back into his chair and catches Steve’s eye across the table as they talk, and smiles. Steve smiles back. 

They finish the pizza, and then Tony brings out the alcohol. 

“What’s the point, half of this lot can’t even get drunk?” Clint asks, but he doesn’t complain when Tony slides a half glass of scotch across the table to him. He holds out another glass in Natasha’s direction and when she doesn’t say no, he slides one over to her too. Bruce declines, Thor accepts despite needing a hell of a lot more than a glass to get him anywhere near drunk, and then Tony looks at Bucky.

“What about you, snowflake? What’s it take to get you tipsy?”

Bucky looks less than happy with the nickname, and then looks at Steve. “I dunno, what’s it take for you? I’m gonna guess it’ll be slightly less than that.”

Steve shrugs. “If I drink a lot, fast, I can almost get tipsy before my metabolism burns it all.”

“Depressing,” Clint snorts.

“Well, some people only drink it because it tastes good anyway, so here,” Tony says, sliding two more glasses down the table. He pours one for himself and holds it up. “To Thor’s return, and here’s hoping he hasn’t dented my roof.”

Everyone raises their glasses in agreement.

For a while they’re kept entertained with Thor’s stories of Asgard. Eventually, Clint catches Natasha’s eye and Natasha asks Thor, “How’s Loki?”

Thor goes very still. “Dead.”

Tony looks like he’s barely holding in a cheer, but Banner reaches across the table and pats Thor on the arm, and the rest of them stay quiet. After a couple moments’ silence, Tony holds up the bottle of scotch. “More alcohol?”

Bucky seems to be doing okay, downing glass after glass with apparently no effect until the point where he reaches out for his glass, stops, and looks down at his hand. 

“What?” Steve asks him, and Bucky grins over the table at him. 

“There’s two.”

“Two what?” Clint asks, mirroring Steve’s confused expression, and then Natasha gets it. 

She lets out a quick jolt of laughter and says, “Two hands. He’s seeing double.”

Steve leans back in his seat, frowning. “Why does it affect you? It shouldn’t.”

“Well in all fairness he’s drunk a good half a bottle,” Tony says, twirling his own glass in small circles on the table top and looking wistfully at the almost empty scotch. “And his serum isn’t a direct replica of yours.”

Bucky is still grinning and moving his hand back and forwards in front of his face, and Clint leans back in his chair and says slyly, “Stand up.”

Bucky looks at Steve, flushed and just like he used to be when he’d drag Steve out dancing with a couple of pretty girls and say, it’s only money, Stevie, before ordering another round. When Steve had agreed, it wasn’t for the alcohol, or the girls. 

Bucky shoves his chair away from the table and gets to his feet. He seems fine for a second before he topples sideways into Thor, who steadies him and laughs.

“You all seem shocked that he is intoxicated. Is this not to be expected?”

“Yeah, he’s a bit of a special case there,” Tony supplies. “You know how Steve got his juice?”

“The serum, yes?”

“Yeah, well a lot of people were trying to copy it,” Tony says wryly. Banner looks down at the table top. “Snowflake here’s got something pretty similar hurtling through his veins.”

Bucky is reaching out a hand for the bottle, and Tony holds it out to him over the table. Steve takes it instead. “I don’t think he should have any more.”

Bucky looks a little confused but he doesn’t say anything. It’s Tony who protests. “Come on, Cap, killjoy much. Let the guy blow off a little steam.”

“To be fair,” says Bruce, “that’s what you say when you’re antagonizing me.”

“Oh, come on, I was not antagonizing you. It was a scientific inquiry.”

“You poked me with a pencil.”

“Does that discount it as a scientific enquiry?”

“It should do.”

“Whose side are you on here, Banner, don’t we all agree the kid should have some fun?” Tony stands up and leans over the table, reaching out a hand to grab the bottle off Steve, who moves it away.

“Who are you to say whether he’s having fun or not?” Steve snaps, and Tony laughs disbelievingly.

“More to the point, who are you?” he says. 

“Really, Stark? You need that spelled out for ya?” Steve throws back, face growing red. 

“Well you’re acting more like his mother than anything else, if you ask me,” Tony snarks, and then they all jump as Bucky slams his metal fist down on the table top.

“I. Am right. Here.”

They’re all quiet, waiting for someone to make the first move. Eventually, Steve does, moving the bottle back to the centre of the table. “I’m sorry. If you want more, have more.”

Bucky holds his gaze for a couple of seconds and then turns to Tony. “I’m sick of scotch, what else ya got?”

 

Two hours later finds them all in various stages of intoxication. Tony, who drinks like it’s a competition, is standing on the coffee table shoulder-dancing along to ‘Highway to Hell’. Natasha is up as well, moving her hips side to side, arms above her head, eyes closed as she dances, and Clint, almost completely smashed, can’t take his eyes off her. Steve looks on from the table as Clint watches at Natasha, eyes hooded, head resting back on the couch, a sappy smile on his face. 

Steve wonders if that’s how he looks when he watches Bucky.

He looks over to where Bucky and Thor are play-sparring, Thor laughing as Bucky takes a swing at him and completely misses, and then catching the metal arm midair and gently pushing at Bucky’s other shoulder to send him stumbling backwards. Thor still has hold of the arm though, so Bucky doesn’t topple, and the image springs to Steve’s mind of a child playing with a puppy, gentle and somewhat amused.

Steve catches himself smiling fondly and then glances back at Clint, now leant forward with his elbows on his knees, watching Natasha spin around gracefully and somewhat at odds with the heavy music. 

Tony jumps down from the table to pour another drink, and he refills Steve’s glass on the way past as he strides a little drunkenly out of the kitchen with another bottle. Steve bites back the, “Do we need more?” that’s on the tip of his tongue. He looks up as Bucky comes around the table to slide arms around his shoulders from behind, and says in his ear, “Hey, Captain.”

“Hey, Buck,” Steve replies with a smile. Bucky smells like alcohol and Steve’s shampoo. He pulls out the chair beside Steve and falls into it, leaning an elbow on the table to rest his chin in his hand. “Having fun?” he asks, and it takes Steve back to 1940 in a little bar in Brooklyn, Bucky with a girl on either side, and Steve sitting alone on a barstool. He feels eerily similar to how he had done back then. No, he wasn’t exactly having fun, but he didn’t want to leave. How does one explain to someone that seeing them happy is what makes you happiest? Steve didn’t know then, and he doesn’t know now, so he just smiles and nods. “Yeah, I am. Are you?”

“I guess. Be more fun if you weren’t lying, though.”

Steve smiles reassuringly and puts his hands up. “I’m not, I swear, I like watching you happy.”

Putting his head on one side Bucky regards Steve with a strange, studying expression, and then gets distracted. “Hey, this is disco!” 

“Yeah, buddy,” Tony says from the stereo as he turns the volume up. “Thought we’d better fill you in on what you missed.”

Steve groans, but Bucky cracks up and stands unsteadily up to go over to Tony still flicking through songs on a tablet. “Requests?” he asks the room at large, and Bruce says, “ABBA,” just as Clint yells, “The Bee Gees!”

“ABBA it is,” Tony says, and then the intro to ‘Dancing Queen’ comes on. Clint groans, Steve looks worried, and Bruce smiles smugly. 

“Who knew,” Natasha says, “Doctor Banner’s a closeted ABBA fan.”

“Keeps me calm,” Bruce jokes.

“Oh yeah, you got a dance that goes along with that?” Clint grins, and Bruce laughs, shaking his head. 

“Never one for dancing.”

“How ‘bout you, old-timers? Gonna give us a demonstration on how the kids used to kick it in your day?” Tony goads. 

Bucky flops down on one of the couches. “Sorry Stark, this one wasn’t in our repertoire,” he says, leaning back into the cushions and stretching his arms up over his head. Steve’s eyes trace the line of his forearm, bicep, and then down his torso to where his t-shirt has risen up, showing a strip of pale skin and a faint trail of hair. Bucky looks over and pats the couch next to him. “C’mon, Cap, join the party.”

Steve grudgingly gets up and comes over, sitting down on the couch a safe distance from Bucky. Tony’s fiddling with the music again and then sighs in frustration. “Jarvis, put on something from the 40’s.”

“Oh god,” Bucky groans, but he’s smiling as something jazzy and faintly familiar starts to play. Steve recognizes it, probably, but he wouldn’t be able to put a finger on when or where from. “Deja vu, eh Steve?” Bucky is saying.

“Demo time, come on boys, ain’t a party ‘til a geriatric dances,” Tony tries again, and Steve tries to save himself.

“Bucky was always the dancer.”

Tony slaps a hand on his knee. “I knew it. C’mon, Buck-o, up.”

“I’m not dancin’, Stark,” Bucky laughs. “’Sides, real dancing needs a partner. None of you fit the bill.”

Steve glanced down at his knees, thinking back to the probably hundreds of girls Bucky had twirled and spun and ‘fit the bill’ back in the day. He’d always watched in envy, but not over the girls.

“What about Rogers,” Tony’s grinning slyly, and Bucky laughs harder than Steve would have liked.

“Steve can’t dance for shit,” he laughs, and Steve goes red.

“You were always the dancer,” he says again, quietly. There’s a pause and then Natasha stands up, and holds out a hand. “Has he ever tried?”

Steve looks up at her in alarm, and she gives the out-held hand a little shake. “C’mon Cap. Show me how it’s done.”

Steve glances nervously around but Bucky’s wearing a slightly surprised expression, Clint’s grinning amiably at him, and Natasha’s still holding out her hand. Screw it, Steve thinks, and takes it. 

Natasha pulls him to the centre of the room and looks at him expectantly, and Steve takes her other hand and then feels completely awkward. Bucky wasn’t exactly lying when he said Steve couldn’t dance for shit, because for all he knew, Steve couldn’t. However, Steve had been a stage puppet before he’d been in the army, and believe it or not, a lot of pretty girls wanted to dance with Captain America. 

“Jarvis, could you slow it a little?” he says, glancing upwards, and Natasha raises her eyebrows. 

“Don’t think I can keep up?”

Steve smiles. “I’m an old man, Nat.”

The music slows a little, and Steve takes a steps towards Natasha. “When I come to you, go back. And there’s a lot of side to side. It’s called swing dancing. Guess you’ll see why.”

They step in and out of sync for about a minute, the others watching and laughing and Clint catcalling and Bucky looking a little disbelieving, which shouldn’t make Steve feel good, but it kind of does. After a minute or so, Natasha gets the hang of it, and Steve finds he’s actually following her. 

“Don’t look so surprised,” Nat calls to Bucky, who’s sitting forward with his hands on his knees and a completely baffled look on his face. “You of all people know I can pick up a fighting move that can kill in less than three attempts. Dancing’s not that much different.”

“Yeah, and you could kill with those moves,” Clint calls from the other couch, and Natasha blushes. 

“Speed it up, Jarvis,” Steve says, and the music speeds up to normal and they fall into step again.

“Then, you just add a lot of stepping and jumping and you’ve kinda got it,” Steve says, and then twirls Natasha around and catches her as she, still a little drunk, almost falls over. Laughing, Steve leads her back to the couch and sets her down beside Clint, who’s still staring at her admiringly. Steve takes his seat next to Bucky and shrugs. “Bucky’s right. Can’t dance for shit.”

Bucky shakes his head without replying and Tony’s watching him with a knowing smile.

“Okay, Jarvis, how ‘bout a little ‘Bee Gees’ for Barton?” he says, getting up to pour himself another drink. He tries to snag Bucky’s glass on the way past but Bucky shakes his head and puts it down on the coffee table. 

“It’s worn off,” he tells Tony. “No point starting over.”

“On Asgard,” Thor begins, “we have something similar, but it is danced in long flowing dresses that swirl around the women’s ankles, and there is a lot more throwing involved.”

“Throwing of what?” Clint asks, and Thor replies, 

“The women.”

While the others talk and laugh, Bucky leans over and nudges Steve’s arm. “I didn’t know you could do that,” he says, and Steve hopes he’s imagining the hurt in his voice.

“Suddenly a lot of girls wanted to dance with Captain America,” Steve says a little ruefully. “Guess it was a little different to how it used to be. Still, I wasn’t very good. And you still had the looks.”

The last part is meant to be a joke, and he looks up to catch Bucky’s eye smiling good-naturedly, but Bucky is looking at him like he’s just said something sad. “Did you hate it?” he says, and Steve frowns.

“What, the dancing?”

“No. Before. When we’d go out, and I’d leave you there to dance with dames.”

“Oh. No, I didn’t hate it. You were having fun.”

“You always say that. It shouldn’t make a difference if I’m having fun. You should have said. I should have noticed. I mean, I did notice, but I always just assumed you just didn’t wanna.” 

“It was the girls that ‘didn’t wanna’,” Steve says, looking away, and then the vehemence of Bucky’s reply makes him look back.

“Well they were stupid,” he says, and Steve is startled into a laugh.

“No, they were looking for someone with a little more athletic ability.”

Bucky just frowns and shakes his head, and Steve just wants to put the smile back on his face.

“After the serum, a lot of girls wanted to dance, don’t worry. I had my share of twirling, Buck. Don’t feel bad.”

“That isn’t the point, Rogers, and you know it.”

“Then what is the point?” Steve says, trying not to raise his voice, but the others haven’t even noticed that they’re no longer contributing.

“The point is,” Bucky begins, and then sighs and stops. “The point,” he tries again, “is that you were still a goddamn good thing before the serum, and it ain’t right.”

Steve doesn’t know what to say, and he’s aware this isn’t the sort of conversation they would be having if Bucky was completely sober. 

“It’s okay, Buck. It’s only dancing.” He smiles and puts a hand up to rub at his face and through his hair, and Bucky nods. 

“S’only dancing,” he says, and then looks away. After a second, he looks back. “You shoulda told me you were good.”

Laughing, Steve shakes his head. “Mama always told me not to lie,” and that makes Bucky laugh too.

“Your mama was a good woman,” he says. “Between her an’ me, you turned out okay. Don’t you forget, I was the one pulling you outta alleys.”

Steve smiles. “Never could.”

It’s almost two by the time Tony kicks them all off his floor. Natasha’s almost asleep, her head on Clint’s shoulder, and Clint gallantly picks her up, balance apparently still perfect even while intoxicated. Thor heads to the balcony and Tony says, “Will Jane be kinda pissed you arrived hours ago and didn’t go to her first?”

Thor looks shamefaced as he picks up Mjolnir. “She will probably hit me quite a lot. It’s okay, I can take it.”

Tony gives him a pat on the back and locks the door behind him, and a second later Thor’s twirling Mjolnir and launching himself off the building. 

Steve holds out a hand to a tired-looking Bucky and pulls him to his feet. “Bed, come on.”

Bucky grins and goes with it. “And after all this time you’re still helping me home.”

“Some things never change,” Steve smiles. “You still feeling it?” Bucky shakes his head.

“Naw, back to sober. Really not all it’s cracked up to be.”

They step into the elevator beside Clint who’s still carrying Natasha, head resting against Clint’s shoulder and eyes blinking closed. Bucky stage whispers, “Do you think she could kill me with her little finger right now?” and Natasha herself replies sleepily,

“Yes.”

The elevator goes to Clint’s floor first, and they say goodnight as he and Natasha get out. Bucky reaches out a hand to press the button, but instead of pushing it he hovers over the one for his floor. “Shall we take a look?” he asks slyly, and Steve doesn’t have time to protest before he’s pressing in the button for the floor below.

The elevator stops and the doors open to reveal not much at all. The space is set out like Steve’s own, elevator opening into a short hallway that joins to a kitchen and living room, with a door to a bathroom and another to a bedroom. Bucky wanders through to the bedroom, newly painted by the smell of it and with a few non-descript pieces of wood laying on the floor next to a folded ladder. The bedroom has a sliding door like Steve’s own room, and Bucky crosses the room to open it.

The night air is cool on their skin as they step outside, and Bucky leans his elbows on the railing and looks down. “Sure is something,” he says, gazing out over the city lights. Steve looks at him, profile silhouetted against the millions of lights of the city beyond. The city itself seems to go on forever, and Steve feels something that might be regret in the bottom of his stomach. Maybe it’s the bottom of his heart. 

He flicks his gaze back out over the city, and then his eyes stray back to Bucky. While he watches, Bucky’s tongue flicks out over his bottom lip and then in again. Then he opens his mouth and says, “Why don’t you ever say anything?”

“About what?”

“I mean, I’m just waiting for you to say it.”

“Say, what?” Steve tries again.

Bucky turns to face him, and he looks equal parts frustrated and fond at the same time. “I thought maybe you just didn’t know it yourself, but you do, don’t you?”

“I don’t… I mean, what are you talking about?” Steve’s frowning, heart starting to speed up with the way Bucky’s looking at him, exasperated and maybe condescending, or is he imagining it, and he tries to breathe deep and remember that he doesn’t get asthma anymore.

“Yeah, you do. But if you wanna go on pretending, that’s cool with me pal, just let me know when you’re ready.”

And now panic is starting to rise in Steve’s chest at the idea that Bucky’s getting at what Steve thinks he’s getting at, and his brain kicks into overdrive trying to work out if Bucky’s mad, or if he’s laughing at him, or if he’s-

“Steve, buddy, can you stop panicking for maybe just one second and look at me?”

“Buck, I can’t, I mean, I don’t…” and he trails off, turning to lean his back against the railing, hands clutching at the metal, trying to breathe deep and feeling like it’s 1940 and he’s in the middle of an asthma attack and they don’t have enough money for medicine, which was basically every goddamn time, and then he just looks at Bucky with his eyes wide and says, “Help.”

And Bucky’s face just falls and he steps towards Steve and puts his hands on Steve’s arms and says, “No, God, I’m sorry I didn’t mean-, you’re okay,” and when that doesn’t help he just shakes his head, squeezes his eyes closed and presses his lips to Steve’s.

Steve doesn’t move for a long moment, chest now completely still and holding his breath, body tense, and only when Bucky moves his hands down Steve’s arms to tangle his fingers in Steve’s own does the life soar back into Steve’s body. He sucks air into his lungs through his nose and kisses Bucky back. It goes from a press of lips to a gentle, lazy kiss, and then Bucky has to pull away because he’s smiling too much. Steve tries to follow him when he pulls back and Bucky laughs and kisses him again, still a bit awkward because he’s smiling and trying not to laugh but now it’s a messy clash of mouths and teeth and a little bit of tongue, and Steve’s about an inch away from crying with relief.

They stand on the balcony, hands twisted together and Bucky pressed up against Steve until Bucky pulls away again and says, “Okay?” and Steve just nods frantically, reaching forward for Bucky’s lips again and this time Bucky doesn’t give in to him, steps away.

“We gotta talk about it,” he says, smiling softly, and Steve just reaches out a hand to grab the front of Bucky’s shirt and haul him back in. 

“Can’t we do that later,” he says into Bucky’s neck as he places kisses along his jaw, his shoulder, on his collarbone, and Bucky lets out a sigh and says, “Yeah, okay,” and then they’re kissing again. The railing gives an unpromising creak of protest when Bucky presses back up against Steve, and Steve pushes himself off it and wraps his arms around Bucky’s waist. 

Steve loses track of time, but when Bucky pulls away gently to hover just over Steve’s lips, Steve smiles and says, “We could probably talk about it now.”

They step back inside the unfinished bedroom and Steve locks the door behind them. As they make their way back to the elevator, Bucky tucks into Steve’s side and presses a kiss to his shoulder as they walk. Steve smiles down at him and puts an arm around his shoulders.

They step into the brightly lit elevator and squint under the offending lights, and Steve presses the button for the floor below. He’s gently running his fingers through Bucky’s hair, not as long as it used to be, back to almost the same style he’d worn it in the army. Steve had felt a stab of nostalgia when Bucky’d had it cut, as he looks now like Steve’s always known him to look. Neither of them could be the people they were before, though, and it had made Steve sad that there was so much time they couldn’t get back. He liked it short though, and Bucky had run his hand through it and said “Anyone’d think HYDRA hadn’t heard of scissors,” and Steve had laughed. 

“How did you know?” Steve asks, breaking the tenuous silence in the elevator. Bucky just says, 

“I know you better than anyone. How could I not know?”

“How long?”

“Are you asking me how long you’ve been in love with me?”

Steve goes red, and he opens his mouth a couple of times, before Bucky laughs. “I’m kidding, Steve. But I guess the answer is, I’ve been hoping I was right since long before the war.”

Steve chokes on his own saliva. “Why didn’t you say anything? Back then, I mean.”

“What, come home one night and just lay it on you? ‘Hey Steve, I think I might be in love with you too, what do you say?’”

Steve huffs a laugh. “Yeah, okay maybe not. I wouldn’t have complained though. Woulda stopped you dancing with all those dames.”

“Ya think?”

Laughing, Steve elbows his sharply in the ribs. “Jerk. It better have.”

With Bucky tucked warm into his side, one arm around his waist, Steve ignores the gentle ding of the elevator coming to a halt in favour of stealing another kiss, one hand coming up to Bucky’s chin to tilt his face upwards, and Bucky’s own hand, the cool, metal one, comes up to cup Steve’s cheek. The coldness of the metal makes Steve jump a little, and Bucky immediately pulls it away, breaking the kiss, and mumbling an apology. Steve doesn’t reply, instead leans back in to kiss Bucky and reaches out a hand to snag his metal wrist, and then places the hand back on his own cheek. It’s still cold, but it’s not unpleasant, and Bucky relaxes back into the kiss again. 

They stand there so long that the doors close on them and Steve pulls away and laughs. “Okay, we can go in now.”

He presses the door button and they slide back open. “I just can’t believe I didn’t notice. I mean, you noticed. Am I really that unsubtle?”

Laughing, Bucky nods vehemently as they walk through into the kitchen. “Yeah, Steve, you’re really that unsubtle. Don’t feel bad, I had a long time to stifle my feelings. And I’ve always been the better liar.”

“Did… The Soldier. When you remembered me, did you remember that?”

“Yeah. He did.”

Steve nodded and took a deep breath. “So just to confirm… you know I’m in love with you, you’re not freaking out, and you sort of, you know… me back?”

Bucky laughs, grinning and nodding as he takes a step towards Steve in the dim light of the kitchen. “Yeah, Stevie. I love you right back.”

Steve can’t stop the smile that spreads over his face, and reaches out a hand to grab at the hem of Bucky’s shirt and pull him in. “God, we’re idiots.”

“Hey, speak for yourself, Rogers. I just didn’t wanna scare you off.”

“How would this scare me off?”

“Well, aren’t you the world’s oldest Virgin?” Bucky teases, and Steve groans. 

“Not you too, come on,” he says, pressing his lips back to Bucky’s and cutting him off mid-laugh. 

Bucky steps forward the rest of the way to press flush up against Steve, backing him against the fridge and then holding him there. They kiss lazily for a while, and then Steve pushes off the fridge and turns them around, pinning Bucky to it, speeding up the kiss, biting Bucky’s lip and moving to kiss his jaw and suck on his ear. Bucky sighs contentedly. “And here’s me thinking I’d get the pleasure of teaching you this stuff.”

“You can teach me,” Steve murmurs in Bucky’s ear. “I’m just making it up as I go.”

“I’m okay with that,” Bucky says, pressing his hips forward. “Besides, it’ll be easy. It’s dames are hard.”

Steve chuckles quietly as he sucks a mark just above Bucky’s collarbone. “It’s okay, I already knew you were easy.”

“Hey,” Bucky laughs, “I was not. I just enjoyed a lot of things.”

“By things, do you mean girls?” Steve says, slipping his hands under the hem of Bucky’s shirt and sliding them up his sides, feeling the soft skin and muscle underneath as Bucky arches forward into him. 

“I might,” he says with a grin, and Steve kisses him again. He’s always been painfully aware that Bucky is more experienced than him. When Bucky would stumble out of the ladies bathroom smelling like perfume with lipstick on his face, Steve would be the one to smudge it off with a thumb and roll his eyes, and Bucky would bat his hand away and laugh and buy Steve another drink. Apart from Peggy, and the stolen moments Steve’d had with her, kissing her softly behind a tent and holding her close while they danced to a slow tune from a crackly jukebox in a dimly lit army bar, Steve hadn’t had time for affection. Before the war, none was offered, and during, there wasn’t time. 

He’s not unknowledgeable, by any means. People these days, he’d thought, were of the general opinion that everyone born before the sixties had lived before sex was a thing that happened. Steve had perhaps been on the sheltered side, but you didn’t live in army barracks with hearing a thing or two. These days, the internet has everything, and then there’s television. When Steve had walked in on Clint and Natasha watching one of the raunchier ‘Game of Thrones’ episodes one evening, he’d sucked in a breath and tried to leave but Clint had wheedled him into sitting down and watching with them. Steve had almost enjoyed it, but decided there was a bit much unnecessary nudity for his taste. It had been informative none the less.

Right now, the soft noises Bucky’s making under his mouth and his hands are enough to make him see what all the fuss is about. When he pushes his hips forward against Bucky’s he can feel Bucky hard against his thigh, and pulls away a little to blurt in surprise, “You’re hard.”

Bucky barks out a laugh. “Yeah, and I’m a little offended you’re not.”

“I didn’t know that was an option,” Steve says in alarm, and Bucky squints at him. 

“Rogers, tell me you know what an erection is.”

“God, Bucky, that’s not what I meant,” Steve snorts, and Bucky’s mouth quirks up in a smile. 

“So you’re trying to be a gentleman, is that it? Just, say you haven’t been thinking of your grandma for the last twenty minutes.”

Steve laughs and shakes his head, and Bucky places a kiss on Steve’s jaw, right where it joins his neck, and whispers in Steve’s ear, “You wanna?”

“Now?” Steve replies in alarm, and Bucky, who’s clearly finding the whole thing pretty amusing, just bites at Steve’s earlobe and turns them around again so Steve has his back to the fridge. Steve could stop him, but he lets Bucky manhandle him around and definitely doesn’t squawk when Bucky slips a hand around the front of his slacks, the other one on his ass, to rub gently at the fabric of his crotch. 

“Steve, chill,” Bucky laughs, and Steve wonders where he picked that up, and then Bucky takes his hand away and pulls back, expression serious. “It’s okay if you don’t wanna. Just tell me, we can wait. We don’t have to do it at all. We can just hold hands and walk in the park and make each other dinner and go out on Fridays. Anything you want, Steve, I mean it.”

“No, I want this. I mean, I want that too, I want all of it. I want you, and for you to be happy, and if all that’s gonna make you happy, then I want it even more. Mostly I just want you to put your hand back where it was.”

Bucky grins and obliges. He puts his mouth back over Steve’s own and kisses him, flicking his tongue against Steve’s and pressing the heel of his hand against Steve’s dick through his pants. Steve cants his hips forward and makes a broken little noise in the back of his throat, and Bucky bites at his lip and squeezes his ass and then whispers in his ear, “But I was lying about the cooking thing, you know I can’t cook for shit.”

“Yeah, I know,” Steve gasps, letting his head fall back against the fridge with a thud. Bucky starts to work on Steve’s belt and when Steve puts a hand down to help, he grabs it with his metal hand and pins it to the fridge. “Nuh-uh,” he says a little breathlessly. “You’ll get your turn.” He gets the belt undone, pops the button of Steve’s slacks and then works down the fly. Steve’s breathing hard and feels completely vulnerable, but under Bucky’s hands he’s safe. Steve’s hard by now, and Bucky kisses him again briefly before pulling away and dropping to his knees. Steve looks down at him with a startled expression, blurts, “We’re in a kitchen,” and then shuts up as Bucky leans forward and presses his mouth to Steve’s cock through the fabric of his underwear. Steve just bites his lip and can’t take his eyes off Bucky as he gently slips his thumbs into the band of his underwear and slides them down. He shifts a little uncomfortably as Bucky places a kiss to his thigh, and then groans embarrassingly loud as Bucky slides his mouth over the head of his dick.

The wet heat is glorious, and Steve has to fight to keep his hips from pushing forward into Bucky’s mouth as he sucks and flicks his tongue over the head, and Steve bites down on his lip hard to keep from blurting out anything stupid. Bucky’s head moves back and forward, back and forward, and Steve gives up watching him and closes his eyes, hands grabbing at the edge of the counter on either side of him until Bucky’s hand, not the metal one currently wrapped around his thigh, comes up on his right to tangle their fingers together. Steve squeezes hard.

A couple of minutes later Steve slides a hand into Bucky’s hair and tugs, a bit harder than he means to, but Bucky just flicks his eyes up to meet Steve’s own and doesn’t pull off. He sucks him right through his orgasm, and when he does pull away to rub a hand over his reddened mouth and wipe the spit off his chin with a grimace, Steve grabs him by the arm and hauls him up, wrapping both arms around his waist and kissing him hard. He tastes salty and his mouth is hot, and Steve holds him maybe a little too tight but Bucky isn’t complaining. He kisses Steve back, tucks him back inside his underwear and then wraps his arms around the back of Steve’s neck, pulling him away from the fridge and having to bend backwards as Steve leans into the kiss. 

“Bedroom?” Steve gasps as he breaks away, and Bucky just nods. When Steve starts to do up his pants still loose around his hips, Bucky says, “Don’t bother, they’ll be off in a minute,” gives Steve the most adorable shit-eating grin, and takes off towards the bedroom.

Steve takes off after him and skids round the doorframe of his bedroom to see Bucky spread out on his bed, lying on his back with his arms stretched up over his head. The room is dark save for the light pollution from the city outside, and Bucky’s dark hair and pale skin are accentuated against the cream bed cover. Steve leans on the doorframe and stares until Bucky wiggles his hips a little and says, “Are you gonna look, or are you gonna try it out?”

“Oh, I’m gonna try it out,” Steve replies with a smirk and then walks towards the bed, stripping out of his t-shirt and then his pants to crawl in his just underwear on top of Bucky. 

Bucky’s craning his neck up to reach Steve’s mouth, grabbing with his hands at Steve’s hips and ass and thighs, trying to get him closer and more and Steve lets him, holding his weight on his elbows and leaning down to kiss him. He strokes a hand over Bucky’s forehead and through his hair, tugging gently on the ends and pushing his tongue deeper inside his mouth. When Bucky makes a little moaning noise in the back of his throat, Steve takes his mouth away and puts it instead on his collarbone, biting and kissing along it until he’s hindered by the edge of Bucky’s t-shirt. 

Bucky sits up a little and tugging at the hem, Steve pulls the shirt up and over his head and then pushes Bucky back down onto the bed again. He kisses his way down Bucky’s chest, holding him by the hips as he places gentle kisses on Bucky’s stomach and hipbone, and then skips his crotch altogether and kisses the course denim of his thigh. Bucky makes a whiny, pleading noise and Steve smiles into the material and keeps going, kissing down the inside of his thigh to his knee and then back up to his hipbone and then finally moving a hand to pop the button on his jeans. Bucky pushes his hips upwards and Steve turns the next kiss to Bucky’s stomach into a bite and laughs. “Stay still.”

“Such a tease, Rogers, least I got straight to the point,” Bucky pants, but Steve knows he’s kidding. 

“You’re not fooling anyone, Buck,” he replies, and gets Bucky’s fly down. Bucky lifts his ass off the bed so Steve can pull his jeans off, and he tosses them somewhere in the darkness. Bucky looks pale in the strange, eerie light of the city below, all shadow and lines, and when he sits up on his elbows to see what Steve’s doing Steve crawls back up the bed to cup his face and kiss him, soft and slow and careful. When Bucky makes a soft, muffled “oh” of relief, Steve thinks, I know.

Steve’s balanced on his knees over him, and he reaches his free hand down to slip inside the waistband of Bucky’s underwear. He’s hard and leaking and Steve pushes the underwear down around his thighs and wraps his hand around him. Without breaking the kiss Steve gives an experimental twist and pull of his hand and Bucky pushes forward his lips harder against Steve’s, biting at his lips and lifting his hips up off the bed into Steve’s hand. 

Steve’s overwhelmed at the sheer desperation Bucky’s moving with, and he gives it straight back, tongues sliding together and hand still moving on Bucky’s dick until he pulls away and gasps for air. His eyes are clamped shut, and Steve moves back down to place a tentative kiss on the head of his cock. Bucky’s eyes fly open. 

“God, Stevie,” and Steve slides the whole thing into his mouth. Bucky moans and his hands bunch in the bed cover on either side of him, metal arm gleaming in the darkness and fingers clamped tight around the fabric. Steve sucks on the head of his cock, surprised at the taste and warmth of it in his mouth, and then swallows him down as far as he can go. Bucky is clearly making a conscious effort to keep his hips on the mattress, and Steve pulls off to say, “It’s okay, do it,” and then slide his mouth back down. Bucky gives a slow push upwards. 

After a lifetime of doctors shoving thermometers down his throat on an almost weekly basis, Steve had discovered pretty early on he didn’t have much of a gag reflex. Of course, he hadn’t seen the benefit of that until right now. As Bucky gets more and more enthusiastic, pushing his hips up into Steve’s mouth and down the back of his throat, Steve strokes soft circles into Bucky’s hips with his thumbs and works his tongue along the underside of his cock. A minute later, Bucky’s moaning, “Stop, I’m gonna-” and when Steve doesn’t pull away, spills down the back of his throat. 

Steve doesn’t get to taste much of it, but it’s salty and warm and not entirely pleasant, but something he’ll probably get used to. He pulls off and tries to rearrange his features to look slightly less like distaste, and Bucky sees him and cringes. “I tried to tell you, I’m sorry, Stevie, you don’t gotta do that,” but Steve shuts him up with a kiss and then falls onto his back on the bed beside him.

“Shit,” he says, breathing hard, and Bucky turns on his side to look at him. Steve’s dick is making a good attempt at hardness again, and Bucky smirks. “Thank you, super-serum. Wanna go again?”

Steve laughs and scrubs a hand over his eyes. “Not right now, I might fall asleep on you. What’s the time, anyway?”

Bucky looks back over his shoulder at the clock on the bedside table and says, “Just after three.”

“Tomorrow, then,” Steve smiles, turning on his side so they’re face to face. 

Bucky nods. “And the day after, and the day after that, and the one after that, twice.”

Steve laughs and closes his eyes. When he opens them, Bucky’s still looking at him. “You okay?” he says, and Steve nods.

“More okay than I’ve ever been.”

“Sap,” Bucky teases, and then rolls over and gets up off the bed. 

“Where are you going?” Steve asks, sitting up and watching as Bucky makes his way to the door. 

“Bathroom. Come on, brush your teeth, you’ll thank me in the morning.”

So Steve gets up too and trails him into the bathroom, taking his toothbrush out of the mug and absently brushing his teeth while he watches Bucky splash water on his face, run a hand through his hair and then brush his own. They’re still completely naked, and Steve’s eyes trail over Bucky’s ass and thighs as he stands at the sink.

“Eyes front, soldier,” Bucky mumbles around his toothbrush, and Steve smirks, placing his own back in the cup.

“Or what?”

Bucky spits his toothpaste into the sink and slaps Steve’s on the bare ass as he follows him out of the bathroom. They crawl into bed, Bucky lying flat on his back, metal arm flung out over the edge and Steve moves closer to curl against his other side, an arm over his stomach. They fall asleep like that, Bucky’s good arm curled over Steve’s shoulders and Steve tucked in against his side, letting the steady beat of Bucky’s heart be the last thing he hears as he drifts off into sleep.

 

Steve wakes with Bucky’s arm thrown across his back and his own face mushed into the pillow. He tries to figure out the best way to turn over without moving Bucky’s arm and waking him up, realizes it will be impossible, and turns over anyway. Bucky grunts into his pillow and withdraws his arm, and opens his eyes to see Steve lying on his side, head pillowed on his arm, smiling at him.

“Did nobody ever tell you it’s creepy to watch a guy sleep, Rogers?” Bucky rasps, closing his eyes again and repositioning his metal arm underneath him. Steve wonders how he ever got used to sleeping with it, and not for the first time is struck with awe at how much Bucky puts up with. He doesn’t complain, he has never once appeared to feel sorry for himself, and Steve thinks mildly that Bucky may just be the best man he knows. Hell, he already know he’s a better man than him, and apparently he was good enough for an all-enhancing super-serum.

“Good morning to you, too,” Steve smiles, and Bucky just groans. Still not a morning person, Steve thinks happily. Some things never change. 

He lies in bed a while longer, turning over onto his back to stop Bucky’s protests. Then he gets up and wanders through to the bathroom, turning the shower on and then stepping into the warm stream of water. He stands under it for a good ten minutes, letting the rivulets run down his shoulders and back, absently shampooing his hair and washing the smell of sex and sleep off himself. 

When he gets back to the bedroom, towel wrapped around his waist, Bucky hasn’t moved. Steve crosses to the window, looking out through the big sliding doors to the city. He stoops and picks up a pair of jogging bottoms that still look pretty clean off the floor, drops his towel and slips into them before unlocking the door and stepping out onto the balcony. He leans on the railing, watching the traffic and enjoying the cool bite of the morning air on his bare skin, and then hears Bucky come out behind him. Warm arms slide around his waist and Bucky leans his chin in Steve’s shoulder and watches with him.

Yellow cabs zig zag the streets like a game of Pacman, and cafes and office buildings are opening their doors, letting in harried looking business people clutching coffees and newspapers. “I hope we don’t have to save the world today,” Steve muses. “I just can’t find the motivation to get dressed.”

Bucky snorts against his shoulder. “Go out like that and all the aliens will fall to their knees in envy.” Steve just laughs.

He turns his head to look at Bucky, who’s thrown on yesterday’s jeans and nothing else. His hair is sticking up at the front and he has sleep in his eyes and Steve reaches up a hand rub at it. Bucky pushes his hand away and leans in for a kiss instead. Steve obliges, and then his stomach interrupts them. He looks down at it, embarrassed. “Guess I’m hungry.”

“That makes two of us,” Bucky laughs, and pulls away from Steve to step back inside the bedroom. Steve looks out over the city for a second, smiles to himself, and then follows him in.

A quick raid of their fridge leaves them with nothing more than a bottle of milk and some left over takeaways that’s been there for almost a week but neither can bring themselves to throw out.

They both look up as Jarvis says, “Good morning, Captain Rogers, Sergeant Barnes. It might interest both of you to know that Agent Barton is making waffles.”

Bucky looks immediately more awake. “Just point us in the right direction, Jarvis,” he says cheerily. 

“The main floor. Mr Stark, Agent Romanoff and Doctor Banner are also present.”

“And they didn’t invite us?” Bucky says in mock offense, looking back at Steve as he makes for the door. Steve follows him to the bedroom and watches from the doorway as he rummaged through Steve’s cupboard. 

“Do you actually have your own clothes?” Steve asks, and Bucky shrugs. 

“I think so. Prefer yours.”

“Why?” Steve asks, wrinkling his nose as Bucky holds up a distinctly grandpa sweater that had seemed like a good idea at the time, and tosses it onto the bed.

“They smell nice,” Bucky answers distractedly, this time pulling out a dark grey Henley Steve’s never worn and pulls it over his head. Steve makes a mental note to let him keep it. He pulls out a white t-shirt and tosses it to Steve, who scrambles to catch it and still misses. “Why are you our national symbol, again?” Bucky asks, one eyebrow raised as he watches Steve pick up the shirt off the ground and yank it over his head. It’s a little tight, but Bucky rakes his eyes over Steve’s torso and smirks, so Steve leaves it on.

“Shut up. And come on, we’re missing waffles,” Steve chastises, and then turns and walks back out into the hall.

 

In Stark’s oversized and outrageously over-equipped kitchen, Clint is indeed making waffles. They smell amazing, and there is already a stack on a plate in the middle of the dining table. Natasha is sitting on the bench carefully spreading jam over one fresh from the waffle maker, and Clint is stirring another batch of batter when Steve and Bucky walk in. Bruce is at the table, eating a waffle with butter and what look to be blueberries, and Tony is multi-tasking as always, unscrewing the second spare waffle maker at the other end of the table with one hand and stuffing pieces of chocolate chip waffle into his mouth with the other.

“Morning, everyone,” Steve says, taking a seat at the table. “Mind if we join?”

“Go ahead, Cap, I’ve made enough for the Asgardian army. Wanna put money on how long it’ll take Thor to show up?”

“Actually, I’ve heard he’s in London,” Tony says around a mouthful of waffle. “Doctor Foster’s doing some research over there, according to Pepper.” Saying something is ‘according to Pepper’ is basically like saying it’s fact, and they all know it, so Clint slowly stops stirring and looks around at the messy kitchen.

“What are we gonna do with all these waffles?” he says, sounding a little lost, and Bucky jumps up on a barstool behind Nat and steals a handful of chocolate chips straight from the packet.

“Relax, Barton, you’re feeding a super-soldier.”

Nat stills as he reaches past her but she doesn’t say anything. The jam she’s smearing on her waffle looks a little like blood, Steve thinks. He looks around for something to drink and finds nothing, so he gets up and goes to the fridge and pulls out a bottle of orange juice. He grabs a glass from the shelf and turns to see Natasha put down the knife, and then place a jammy finger in her mouth. When she pulls it away there’s a little smudge of red jam on her upper lip. Clint, still stirring the bowl of batter, sees it too and leans in with a smirk.

“Hey Nat, you’ve got red in your ledger. Need someone to wipe it out?” He doesn’t wait for an answer before leaning in and kissing the jam off her lip, and when he pulls away Nat’s desperately fighting a smile. Steve catches Bucky’s eye, and Bucky’s grinning. Behind him, Tony makes a gagging noise.

“Speaking of which,” Tony says, “are we gonna talk to about it?”

“Talk about what?” Steve asks. 

“You and Bucky. Have you discovered how he got that nickname yet?”

Clint lets out a startled laugh and Nat kicks him in the knee. Steve’s stomach feels like it’s flipped upside down, and Bucky’s gone very still.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Steve tries, but Starks already waving his hand and saying,

“Don’t bother, we all know and it’s cool. Nothing shocks us 21st century folk.”

“I… how?” Steve says, and Tony fixes him with a look.

“This is building has the highest security rating of any building in the whole of New York. Second highest in the world, and that’s only because even I don’t see the point in flying robot patrols. You honestly think I don’t put security cameras on my balconies?”

Steve goes red, and Bucky smirks and twirls around on his stool. “Enjoy the show then, Stark?”

“It was alright. Predictable. Steve doesn’t use enough tongue-”

“You watched it!?” Steve gasps from the other side of the counter and Stark rolls his eyes as Bruce says, 

“Come on, Tony.”

“Of course I didn’t watch it. Jarvis told me you were out there and I asked what you were doing, don’t look at me like that Rogers, Jesus.”

Steve tries to imagine how that exchange between Tony and Jarvis would have gone down, and fails. Awkward is the word that springs to mind, but it definitely beats the alternative.

“Besides,” Nat says from the counter. “No offence James but you stink of sex.” She twists around to look at him, and Bucky smiles at her and pops a chocolate chip in his mouth.

“How kind of you to notice,” he drawls, and Steve makes a choking noise in the back of his throat.

Slapping his screwdriver down on the table and reaching for another waffle, Tony makes an exasperated noise. “Goddamn it. Now we can’t claim to be the super-hero team with the oldest living virgin.”

Steve snorts orange juice out of his nose, and Bucky’s laughing so hard he almost falls off his stool. 

 

Nothing changes, but everything changes. Stark never gets round to finishing Bucky’s floor, after all. It’s a strange day when Coulson calls them all in, Bucky included, to the new SHIELD. It’s modern and clinical and Stark points out five security failures before they’ve even hit the elevator, but it’s getting there. 

Coulson puts them through a skills test, an intelligence test, a compatibility test, what Steve is fairly sure is a sanity test, and reluctantly declared them all fit for combat. Bucky included. He keeps Bucky back when they others are let go, and Steve hovers anxiously outside the door until he comes out.

“What did he say?” Steve asks, and Bucky gives him a smile and shrugs. 

“Nothing much. Just wanted to know if I wanted to change my field name.”

“And do you?” Steve asks, wondering how he’s going to get used to thinking of Bucky as anything different.

“Naw,” Bucky replies. “’Winter Soldier’ kinda grew on me.”

 

Epilogue

Bucky’s sitting on the kitchen counter, legs wrapped around Steve’s waist to hold him against him as they kiss breathlessly. Steve has his arms wrapped around Bucky’s waist, fisted in the soft wool of the sweater he’d stolen out of Steve’s wardrobe a few hours ago. 

Steve moves his kissed from Bucky’s mouth, down his neck and to his chest. The neck of the jersey keeps getting in the way so he grabs the hem and yanks it and the shirt under it up and over Bucky’s head, throwing them to one side as he kisses his way down Bucky’s stomach. Bucky just smirks and leans back, resting on his hands on the counter and watches Steve as he mouths at Bucky’s belt and then works it undone with his fingers. Bucky’s tongue flicks out over his lower lip, and his heels kick at the cupboards under the counter as he spreads his legs wider and pushes his hips up towards Steve’s mouth.

Steve drops to his knees on the kitchen floor and impatiently slaps Bucky’s thigh, and when Bucky chuckles and lifts his hips up off the counter Steve pulls his pants and underwear down over his hips and thighs and then off completely. They’re thrown in the same direction as the shirt.

When Steve wraps his lips around his dick, Bucky groans and closes his eyes, and when he opens them and looks down Steve is gazing up at him like he hung the goddamn sun, and Bucky makes a needy little sound in the back of his throat and threads a hand through Steve’s hair, pulling just hard enough to make Steve pull back and frown a little. Bucky grabs at his shoulder and pulls him up to meet his mouth, shoving his tongue ineloquently into Steve’s own and pulling his body back against him, feeling the denim of Steve’s jeans and the hardness behind it against his own dick. He pushes forward a little, needing friction, and then pulls away to gasp, “Fuck me, Rogers.”

Steve smirks. “Do we keep lube in the kitchen or do we have to move?”

“What do you take me for, of course we keep lube in the kitchen,” Bucky replies, punctuating his sentence with a roll of his hips against Steve’s. He motions to the cupboard above his head, and Steve lifts an arm to open it and then grab at the little tube of lube.

“Why,” Steve says as he pulls his own shirt over his head, “do we keep that there?”

“I have a thing for kitchen sex, what can I say,” Bucky says with a grin. “Something about that fridge just does it for me.”

Steve snorts and glances at the fridge beside them. “Well if you’re lucky, you might just get to be fucked against it.”

Bucky smiles serenely and lets his head tip back as Steve shoves his own jeans down and off and slicks up his fingers. Bucky reaches out a hand for Steve’s dick and Steve bats it away. 

“Don’t even,” he says, and then pulls Bucky forward on the counter. Bucky leans back on his elbows and then Steve’s leaning over him, narrowly avoiding smacking his head on a cupboard above them, and kissing Bucky’s neck as he moves his fingers to circle gently at Bucky’s entrance. Bucky bites his lip and closes his eyes, feeling Steve’s breath hot on his neck and his teeth as he nips at the skin just above his shoulder, and his tongue as it swipes out to lick at the bite marks. Then one finger presses carefully in and Bucky makes a whimpering noise. Steve kisses his ear and pushes his finger in further, and then whispers, “You smell like my soap.”

“Yeah, that’s cause I use your soap,” Bucky breathes back, and Steve gives a little exhale of a laugh. 

He adds another finger and Bucky shifts his hips on the counter, pushing them forward into Steve’s hand and hitching a leg up on Steve’s waist to give him more room. Steve’s fingers get less and less careful, pushing into him and twisting upwards and around until Bucky’s breathing hard and pushing down to meet Steve’s thrusts, and then Steve adds another and Bucky says, “God, Steve, come on.”

Grabbing for the lube Steve squeezes more into his palm and then reaches down to wrap his hand around his dick, eyes fluttering shut for a second. Bucky sits up and reaches for him, looping his arms around his neck and pressing a kiss to his mouth before Steve is picking him up and moving them sideways to the fridge. 

Bucky hisses as the cold of the metal meets his back, and Steve holds him there with one arm around his waist, the other reaching down to press back into him for a second before pulling out and pushing the head of his dick in. Bucky lets his head tip back against the fridge door, making a gentle thud as Steve pushes slowly all the way in. He lets out a breath and holds there for a few seconds, until Bucky pushes forward on him and says with a sly smile, “Are we gonna fuck or not, Cap?” Steve pulls out then shoves back in. 

Bucky lets out a choked off cry and Steve fucks back into him again, holding Bucky effortlessly against the fridge door as he thrusts in and out. Bucky’s legs are tight around Steve’s waist, his arms around his neck, and he doesn’t hold back the moans as Steve pistons his hips. His dick is caught between his own stomach and Steve’s, and he’s about to reach a hand down to wrap around himself when a phone rings.

Steve slows his thrusting and frowns. His phone is sitting on the bench next to them and Steve looks at Bucky, looks at the phone, and then reaches for it. Bucky’s about to protest and unwrap his legs from Steve’s waist, when Steve says, “Shhh, it’s Coulson,” unlocks the goddamn phone and fucking answers it. While still sliding slowly in and out of Bucky’s ass. Bucky’s eyebrows shoot into his hairline as Steve says casually, “Rogers speaking.”

“Morning, Captain. We’re going to need you to come in.”

Bucky gives a snort of laughter at that, and has to bite at Steve’s shoulder to stop from laughing out loud. Steve still has them against the fridge, pushing slowly in and out of Bucky, and Bucky, now that he’s started, can’t stop laughing. Steve frowns at him, but can’t keep the smirk off his own face as he replies to Coulson.

“Now?”

“As soon as you can get here.”

“I’ll come as soon as I can,” Steve promises. “Half an hour.”

Bucky gives a cackle of laughter before he can stop himself and Steve tries to shut him up with a particularly hard thrust, but Bucky’s already gone. He’s muffling the laughs in Steve’s neck, and thinks he’s doing an okay job until Coulson says,

“Great. And bring Barnes. It sounds like he’s having far too much fun.”

Steve makes a choking noise and then calmly replies, “Yes, sir,” and hangs up. 

Bucky gives up and howls with laughter, and Steve thrust back into him and says, “You’re the worst.” 

But he’s grinning, and Bucky decides faux-angry sex is actually his new favourite.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to my wonderful tumblr betas, you pointed out things I would never have noticed and I love you for it.


End file.
